IOMO Gallery announces the exclusive worldwide representation of Mircea Roman

IOMO Gallery is pleased to announce the exclusive worldwide representation of Romanian sculptor Mircea Roman (b. 1958, Tîrgu Lăpuș, Maramureș). Formalising this relationship is a natural step in IOMO Gallery's continued commitment to promoting Mircea Roman's extensive practice and safeguarding his legacy, both in Romania and worldwide.

The representation builds on a long-standing collaboration between the artist and IOMO. His work has been a recurring presence in the gallery's group exhibitions, from its early programme to its fifth anniversary show Progress Is Not A Straight Line (2026). In 2025, the gallery dedicated a solo exhibition to him, Lupta schimbă gustul cărnii, centred on major monumental works such as Jacob's Fight with the Angel. In parallel, the gallery has placed his works in collections in Romania and abroad. In 2026 the collaboration extended internationally with a presentation at CAN Art Fair Ibiza, where the IOMO booth was named by Artsy among the top five of the fair. Most recently, IOMO published the artist's bilingual catalogue and launched it with 1/50, an exhibition of fifty new drawings.

For more than four decades, Roman has held to the human figure, building it through fragmentation and reassembly rather than carving it from a single mass. He hollows and shapes segments of softwood (poplar, linden, willow) and rejoins them with visible nails, staples and clamps, often at the joints. He calls this method "tehnica aceasta cu bucăți" ("this technique with pieces"). His figures hold a constant tension between fragility and monumentality: bodies made as outer shells without a rigid core, impenetrable faces, and a recurring attention to necks and ankles as the passages between the human and the fabricated. The human shell, the pyramid, the boat-man and Jacob are motifs he has developed since the late 1980s, and they continue to drive both his sculpture and his drawing.

Roman graduated from the "Ion Andreescu" Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj-Napoca in 1984. He received the Atelier 35 Prize in 1988 and exhibited at Galeria Orizont in Bucharest in 1989. In 1992 he won the Grand Prize of the Osaka Sculpture Triennale, and the winning sculpture entered the Osaka Prefecture collection. He was included in the Venice Biennale in 1995, by which time a residency at Delfina Studio had established him in London for what became more than a decade. He returned to the Osaka Triennale in 1995, 1998 and 2001 and has exhibited at the Cerveira Biennial in Portugal. His practice is the subject of the monograph Mircea Roman. din fragmente by Alexandru Davidian (Vellant, 2018). His work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, the Osaka Contemporary Art and Culture Center, and numerous private collections internationally.

Through the representation, IOMO Gallery will support Roman's new production, present his work to international audiences and institutions, and continue documenting and preserving the archive of a practice that holds a distinct place in the history of Romanian sculpture.

The catalogue Mircea Roman: The fighting changes the taste of meat, published by IOMO Gallery in a bilingual Romanian–English edition, will soon be available at Cărturești, online and in stores. It is also available directly from the gallery or on request by emailing [email protected], with worldwide shipping.