Niram Art Magazine

    “In the fall of 2007, at Sibiu, the town elected European Capital of Culture, Ioan Iacob has been invited to hold a solo exhibition, the third of the artist’s solo shows in Romania. The Brukenthal Museum will be the host of his paintings.                 
As each one man’s show, bearing the signature of Ioan Iacob, this will also be structured upon two strong coordinates: an exhibition of recent works, a particular chapter of the painter’s existence, and at the same time, the attempt of communicating openly with a public prepared to receive contemporary art in all its dimensions and with all its variety.        
The Sibiu exhibition has been conceived as a unique visual show, in the sense of  its situation in space and time, being centered on the impressive trypthic with the painter’s self-portraits, as the center of irradiating a singular graphic confession. Along with all the other self-portraits exposed, this trypthic also avows without hesitation the terrible need of the painter to live in communion with the art he creates.                     

The self-portrait of the painter seems to be dissolving itself in the midst of the ample composition, determining its existence and letting itself be devoured by the reality created upon the canvas. This is actually an incandescent love relationship, confessed also by color. The powerful, long-studied shades of red sustain at a chromatic level the passion experienced by the painter, in love with his canvas, palette and colors.
The escape towards the color red, expression of the world of physics, may be used as a metaphor for Ioan Iacob’s paintings, as long as the artist effectively investigates the expressive possibilities of the color red and its complex tones. Generally speaking,  the self-portrait, as a definition of the self and the self-portrait with expressionist suggestions, the human face, looked upon with a lucid, yet understanding eye, will represent the theme of the Sibiu exhibition. The antagonism angel / demon, that has troubled the artist during his entire life, finds its graphic expression  in this new series of paintings, but mostly in those self-portraits, in which one can almost see the discreet yet convincing presence of angel wings.”


Luisa Barcan
(Excerpt of  “The Solitude of the Objects”, from the Catalogue of the Exhibition: Red Darkness, Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, 2007)