Around 1990, some powerful local players anointed Rob Birza as The Man Who Will Save Dutch Painting. Overwhelming expectations were thereby heaped on an uneven young painter often given to a facile virtuosity, heavy-handed irony, and an all too hasty form of stylistic eclecticism. However, in recent years Birza has sometimes appeared more focused and convincing——notably, in “Cosy Monsters from Inner Space,” a series of comic strip–style horror paintings and drawings from 1998. The equally successful new series “One Is Free,” 2001–2003, the subject of his latest show (which took the