Jasper Johns

Opening Reception 6-8pm Friday, Feb 1: Jasper Johns Drawings 1997-2007, the next exhibition in his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street. The exhibition will include forty drawings, many of which have never before been exhibited publicly. This will be Jasper Johns√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ second one-person show at M... Read more

Opening Reception 6-8pm Friday, Feb 1:

Jasper Johns Drawings 1997-2007, the next exhibition in his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street. The exhibition will include forty drawings, many of which have never before been exhibited publicly. This will be Jasper Johns’ second one-person show at Matthew Marks Gallery.

A wide variety of subject matter and media can be seen in Johns’ drawings made over the past ten years. The works are filled with autobiographical references and allusions to earlier art-historical precursors. They often combine his now-famous motifs from early in his career – flags, maps, numerals, cross-hatching – with new ones – a Harlequin’s costume, a piece of string, or flagstones. Thomas Crow, in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, writes that Johns treats these motifs “like interchangeable members of an alphabet or lexicon.”

Johns makes his drawings in ink, charcoal, watercolor, acrylic paint, pastel, and/or graphite pencil, among other media, on many different kinds of paper, as well as sheets of plastic.