THE last time Felim Egan exhibited sculpture in Dublin, it was at a less than successful show at the Kerlin. On that occasion, the artist's abstract totem poles seemed cramped, uncertain as to whether they each had their own point of view or wanted to make a collective statement. Now, in a show created especially for the west wing at IMMA, the human size bronze sculptures and the paintings which accompany them seem more certain about what they want to do.

The first painting visitors must face, Sepia Dream, is in a style instantly recognisable as Egan. But something seems unfamiliar. Ground stone has been mixed into Egan's dark grey green ground, so that the impression of shifting sands' moving into the space in front of the picture is exaggerated to the point of trompe loeil.

The picture sets the tone for the entire show, which seems to engage in a series of carefully planned sorties across the border between painting and sculpture. At first the shapes triangle, ball, short diagonals of Egan's painted work seem to invade his sculpture, but his free standing pillars are soon retaliating with quick and deliberate incursions back over the border.

At first the circulation of ideas and forms is carried out by juxtaposition. In a manner straight out of Flann O'Brien, paintings and sculptures are left together in the same space, in tranquillity, to see if they begin to exchange molecules. Soon, however, in the narrative sequence suggested by the show's hanging, the artist himself must step in and emphasise his serious, though never, surly presence.

The climax of the long sequence of installations comes in the final room of the wing. Here Egan has installed Enclosure, the largest of his paintings, and the first to incorporate sculptural elements into the picture frame. A small metal construction, in which a sphere is held in place by two heavy metal horizontals, takes up a tiny portion of an immense multi part canvas, on which black swings into brown, and eventually green and blue.

Along the long corridor wall, nine smaller images allow the importance of sculptural and painter detail to balance each other. In these images, the wax that has up to this point been a spectral presence, begins to pile up thickly. The mild, milky green that is so much a hallmark of Egan's painting turns up as verdigre. Finally, a comforting accommodation is found, as slender ingots of metal sit snugly, flush with the picture surface.

Runs until February 25th.