The first thing you notice are the fingers. These are big, long fingers, four of them radiating outward from each half of a stretching oil on canvas diptych the artist calls "Double Fist."

Maybe the second thing you notice is that these are not fists.

"I like the title because a fist is an aggressive sign," explains the artist, Martin Gustavsson. "But, no, they aren't fists. It could be that it's just before they become a fist, and then you can imagine the picture how you want it to be."

Like the balance of Gustavsson's show at the Taro Nasu Gallery in Tokyo's Koto Ward, "Double Fist" carries apparent contradictions. The nonclenched "fists" are realistic, but they are a weird blue, not flesh-colored. On another canvas, ruby red flower stems wisp into vaguely threatening configurations, while "Mattress," a soft and subdued four-panel work, hangs as a life-size tribute to the beauty of the stains on the artist's beloved old bed.

Gustavsson, 35, is a tall and personable Swede. He has the sort of eyes that sparkle with enthusiasm no matter what he is talking about. Get him started on art, and they ignite. The longtime London-based Gustavsson has recently relocated to New York, where he is turning those intense eyes to new ways of seeing, with the help of a couple of cameras and pocketfuls of quarters.

The coins are for the artist's neighborhood color photocopy machine, a device that Gustavsson uses to suggest the colors that will find their way onto his canvases. To create "Double Fist" Gustavsson first photographed his own hands, then undertook a long process of photocopying and recopying the pictures to produce a sequence of prints whose hues were randomly determined, by factors such as whether a certain color ink in the copy machine was running low. The resulting color shifts lend an element of chance to Gustavsson's process, and the artist speaks almost lovingly of the happy accidents that help determine his palette.

When asked what first attracted him to painting, Gustavsson does not hesitate to point to the process inherent in the medium.

"Painting is an ongoing thing," he says. "You don't simply decide a project and go ahead and do it. Painting is a process that starts with time and slows it down."

Especially oil painting, as anyone who has ever waited two weeks for a canvas to dry will attest. And here again one finds an apparent contradiction in Gustavsson's work. As a compliment to the randomness of his photocopy studies, Gustavsson seems drawn to the ritual aspects of oil painting, and this includes everything down to his careful choice of brushes.

The artist's still lifes reveal his methodical technique. The flower studies, "Daisy Chain 9" and "Daisy Chain 9 1/2," are richly colored yet light and lyrical. From a distance, they can look like slightly out-of-focus photographs, while from closer in they appear to be airbrushed paintings. But they are neither, and it is the use of small, fine brushes in a process of repeated application of thin layers of paint that invest Gustavsson's pictures with their ethereal qualities.

Gustavsson believes that the medium of painting also slows down a viewer's way of looking at things. These days, as we are faced with an environment that includes more and more visual information, we tend to scan images quickly. Gustavsson believes that paintings invite us to look a little longer, to linger.

"You have to take time to sort of slow down your way of looking," he says, "in order for your imagination to appreciate what you are seeing."

Here, there are no contradictions -- Gustavsson's commitment to the painting process is neatly mirrored by the manner in which he believes art can best be appreciated. Paintings, he seems to be saying, are the flowers modern man needs to stop and smell.

The Taro Nasu is one of Tokyo's leading contemporary art galleries, but like most of its ilk, is on the smallish side. The Martin Gustavsson show, which features only seven of the artist's recent paintings, is one of those occasions where you might find yourself wishing there was more wall space. There is something to savor here, but the work is addictive. I left wanting more.