Jasper Johns is often encountered through recognition. Flags, targets, crosshatches — images that register immediately, before much looking has taken place. Over time, this familiarity has trained a certain kind of confidence: that the work is already understood, that meaning arrives early.
That expectation is difficult to loosen. Johns’ forms feel legible almost on contact. Interpretation tends to arrive before the room does. At first, this exhibition does little to resist that habit. The works are familiar. The spacing is calm. Nothing announces a break. The paintings hang with a steadiness that seems to allow recognition to proceed as usual.
But recognition doesn’t get very far here.
Spending time in the rooms, it becomes clear that familiarity isn’t being used to communicate ideas so much as to neutralize them. The images arrive quickly, then stop offering direction. Looking doesn’t build toward interpretation. It circles. What is known no longer advances attention.
Repetition begins to matter more than variation. The same structures return without emphasis or escalation. Differences appear, but they don’t accumulate into development. Meaning doesn’t unfold. It stays in place.
Gradually, the work feels less like image and more like containment. The paintings no longer guide attention; they hold it. Spacing prevents sequences from forming. Distance interrupts comparison. Each work stands on its own, encountered and released, without needing to contribute to a larger argument.
Time registers quietly. Not as history or evolution, but as density. Marks repeat without insistence. Surfaces retain evidence of return without dramatizing change. What’s present isn’t an idea progressing, but duration held steady.
By the end, the exhibition seems to have shifted how looking operates. Interpretation becomes less useful than patience. The question is no longer what does this mean? but how long can attention remain here without resolution?
