Did cavemen dream of electric sheep? According to Brad Birchett they did. His new show, “Return,” is semiotics rendered with an intuitive hand. Picture cavelike paintings that morph in and out of subjective realities as if trying to live in two different dimensions. The push and pull of conflicting states gives Birchett’s pieces their hallucinatory edge, with his bold strokes shaping his deceptively simple compositions under ashen hues of implied color. Crudely refined, his paintings strive to make sense of man’s need for symbolism only to find that they’re one and the same. “Return” opens Thursday, Sept. 4, from 5-8 p.m. at Quirk Gallery, and runs through Oct. 25. quirkgallery.com.