“Tu aimeras ce que j’aime et ce qui m’aime: l’amant que tu ne connaîtras pas”
“You will love what I love and what loves me: the lover whom you should not know”

 Art inhabits a cascade of reflections, impressions that shift from one moment to the next. This mirror takes as its title the German word Sehnsucht, literally “an addiction to seeing,” but typically used to convey a sense of longing, or unrequited desire – an emotion at the heart of Baudelaire’s poem. This complex feeling is perfectly captured in the technology of mirror-making, revolutionized by glassmakers in Murano during the Renaissance; their craft was so closely guarded that it sparked a saga of espionage and intrigue, culminating in King Louis XIV of France stealing their knowledge to create the Galerie des Glaces in Versailles. Here, Irene recaptures the tantalizing promise of reflection, with solid petals of compounded glass interspersed with reflective surfaces in which one sees oneself fleetingly.