The profound and sensually erotic imagery of 1971 Russian born artist Irina Polin is reflective yet irritating at the same time. When first viewing Polin’s portrait photographs – the first group of work that will be on view – one assumes to have an idea of her intentions.

But soon enough, that idea becomes deluded. The confusion grows because Polin takes photographs as a first step and then, as the second step, uses them as templates for her paintings, extracting only a portion of the image to recreate with paint.

Once the painting is complete, as a third step, she further extends the image by photographing these paintings “after” her own photographs.

When all is said and done, Irina then destroys the painted portraits, liberating the final photograph from its origin.

In a second group of works Polin created photographs after the paintings of worldfamous painter Balthus. Balthus is notorious for his daring, erotically charged compositions of women in “suspense-like” situations. His work has been discussed in the most controversial ways internationally. Almost as if her admiration for the great painter has to be dominated by doing something as if she was defending herself, by appropriating the master’s painting in another medium, the young Russian-Swiss artist transforms the scenes and sequences in Balthus’s paintings into models with dolls and artificially created, three-dimensional, almost “homely” surroundings. It is as if Polin would say to Balthus: “I express my respect for your art by putting my spell on it”.

Irina Polin, who for the past 10 years has been living and working in Switzerland, masters with a playful confidence the seemingly effortless coexistence of fiction and reality, of present and past. One clearly recognizes a joy of both life and creation, of playing and masquerades. Irina Polin’s work is of greater depth than is first apparent. Reality and dream are not shut out... they stand side by side as equals.