Intuitive Force – Ioan Sbârciu
opening 11.06.2026
dates 12.06.2026-12.07.2026
From June 11 to July 12, 2026, the historic spaces of Palazzo Cavallerini Lazzaroni in Rome will host the solo exhibition “Intuitive Force” by the renowned Romanian painter Ioan Sbârciu. The exhibition features a selection of medium and large-scale works, conceived as a visual journey where pictorial practice dialogues with the traditions of literature and philosophical thought. These are not merely learned references, but true, active structures of his visual imagination.
The choice of venue is no coincidence: the thematic connection between art and the written word integrates perfectly into the spaces of the Palazzo, which also houses a historic bookstore on the ground floor.
On a subconscious level, Ioan Sbârciu operates through archetypal intuitions and symbolic figurations that emerge as deep sedimentations of literary and philosophical imagery, introspection, and the analysis of reality. On a rational level, his research develops in constant dialogue with the theories of Umberto Eco and Giorgio Agamben, the poetic philosophy of Lucian Blaga, as well as through direct engagement with the philosopher Aurel Codoban and the poet Ion Mureșan.
On the tenth anniversary of Umberto Eco’s passing, the exhibition takes on an even deeper significance, highlighting the extraordinary affinities between the thought of the great Italian intellectual and the figure of Sbârciu.
On a formal level, Sbârciu’s painting sits on the borderline between figuration and abstraction, relying on the sign as the central element of visual construction. In this perspective, the work dialogues with Eco’s thought, according to which meaning arises from the interpretation of signs within open systems. Sbârciu’s painting thus becomes a plastic expression of the concept of the “open work” (opera aperta) coined by Eco, in which meaning is never definitive but develops as an expanding possibility. Within this process, the viewer is called upon to engage in an activity that Eco terms “creative abduction”: starting from visual signs, the viewer formulates interpretive hypotheses, progressively constructing the meaning of the work.
Another key to interpreting the artist’s practice is offered by the thought of Giorgio Agamben and his reflection on the Heideggerian concept of the “Open” (l’Aperto), centered on the distinction between man and animal, and the capacity to directly access the profound nature of things. Sbârciu’s painting confronts this primordial condition by constructing landscapes that are not merely natural views, but rather inner topographies where ancestral memory, animality, myth, and matter resurface.
“Intuitive Force” celebrates painting as a meeting place between matter and thought.
Press folder: drive.google.com
Intuitive Force – Ioan Sbârciu
11 June – 12 July 2026
Daily, 10.30 am – 8.00 pm, free entry
Opening: June 11, 2026 at 6.00 pm
Palazzo Cavallerini Lazzaroni
Via dei Barbieri 7, Rome