Carl Belz writes about the work of Richard Jacobs on the occasion of Jacobs' exhibtion Soul Delay at Jack Leary Gallery, New York, on view from September 12 – October 11, 2014. (Full catalog here)

Belz writes that Jacobs' paintings "are visibly intelligent and informed, they know the past whence they came, along with the wide range of techniques that enabled their construction… Their abstractness is likewise purposeful in being stripped of narrative and figuration with the aim of having them stand on their own, not in the name of any theoretical goal of purity–a recurrent misconception about modernist abstraction–but as an affirmation of their autonomy, which is synonymous with their modern condition, as it is with ours as well. Which is in turn to say their abstractness is a matter not of stylistic tropes or nostalgic appropriations, both common in our time, but a way of being in the world–as the best abstraction, past and present, has always been."