THE show of new paintings by Frank Chiappa at the Lighthouse Restaurant that opened last Sunday is, for Bermuda, distinctly unusual. The surreal brooks no half measures. It is or it isn?t. One likes it or hates it. One may also be impressed by it and even enjoy studying its intricacies while still disliking the genre.

The one thing that is absolutely essential for surrealism is the technical proficiency to accomplish its distortions with confidence and aplomb. This is something Mr. Chiappa doesn?t always achieve. and , and attempt the trick of making the tables and chair involved progressively more transparent from foreground to background. The idea is clever enough and the effect ought to be unsettling but the deficiencies of technique almost defeat the trick.

These paintings are separated by , a neat pun where the mouth of the bay is filled with a floating empty sardine tin on which repose green, freshly caught fish. Here the technique rises comfortably to the occasion. and, however, defeated me. Neither one had any apparent wit and the uninteresting subject matter in each was set against almost identical backgrounds.

These seven paintings made up half the small show, but the following seven made me think the show may have been hung in chronological order of painting. The painting technique improves markedly. is of a seated female figurative sculpture of markedly "contemporary style. It is set in stark isolation, but with a satisfying visual escape using a small arch through which sea and a horizon may be seen. portrays two trumpets gone limp and posed on the edge of a cliff with other cliffs rising in the background. One has a doubly detached mouthpiece. The effect achieved is of sadness and failure and the execution is admirable. This work is paired with and depicts what may have been a battle between two guitars and a grand piano.

Both sides have lost and remain dead on the battlefield, limp, and unstrung.

Once again the work is nothing if not effective. is also finely painted. The mask is pre-Columbian, perhaps Aztec, and sits mysteriously on two linen draped tables pushed tightly together with sea and horizon in the background. Once again the evocation is of sadness and loss. Its companion piece, is more figure than statue and is set in the desert with a pyramid in the distant background. The figure wears an elaborate headdress curiously evocative of Christian Eastern Orthodox iconography, thus achieving a cultural standoff to unsettle the viewer.

The most complex of these works is . The voyager is a small salamander crawling along a stone road towards a distant, pre-Columbian representation of the sun.

On either side of the road are two stone doorways without doors. The nearer one has a hand where the latch might have been and could represent welcome were it not turned downwards. The other has a lock and bar and definitely does not represent welcome. I was intrigued and enjoyed trying to interpret the symbolism, but in the end could not. I think I have seen before. It is a close take of a weathered, deeply textured door with much in the way of ancient latches and locks, all of which are broken. Amongst them is an apparently functioning modern Yale lock. Many interpretations are available and it is finely executed.

The second half of this show is technically up to the challenges surrealism poses and presents a number of intriguing mental conundrums to the viewer.

Whatever your take on surrealism, there is enough sheer fun involved in studying this show to take you up to the lighthouse for lunch.