Jasper Johns Explores Mortality and Time in New Gagosian Exhibition

rt critic John Yau explores Jasper Johns’s latest exhibition at Gagosian, analyzing the artist's decade of crosshatch mastery and reflections on human mortality.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 9, 2026, 10:45 AM EDT

Source: Art Review

The Rejection of Abstract Heroism

Jasper Johns’s early work famously signaled a break from the existential angst and spontaneous gestures of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Rather than improvising on the canvas, Johns focused on "things the mind already knows"—flags, targets, and numerals. By using encaustic, a fast-hardening wax medium, he ensured that every mark was a deliberate, recorded decision. This methodical approach transformed common symbols into an integral part of his visual vocabulary, a process that is showcased in the current exhibition through works that emphasize order and repetition over emotional eruption.

The Vulnerability of the Flag and the Body

The exhibition traces Johns’s evolution back to his iconic "Flag" (1954–55). In a poignant reflection on his own aging, Johns once noted that the fragile combination of newsprint and wax in his early paintings was "falling apart," much like his own body. This link between the physical art object and the mortal frame is a recurring theme in the Gagosian show. Johns views his paintings as vulnerable bodies existing in time, where the layered encaustic process documents a "birth" and subsequent history of decisions, mirroring the way a human life is constructed through time and memory.

The Obsessive Language of the Crosshatch

A central focus of Between the Clock and the Bed is Johns’s decade-long preoccupation with the crosshatch motif. First appearing in 1972, these clusters of parallel lines were inspired by a pattern Johns saw on a passing car. He was drawn to the motif’s "literalness, repetitiveness," and "possibility of complete lack of meaning." Throughout the works on display, the crosshatch serves as a vehicle to explore the relationship between the mechanical and the human, evoking both industrial repetition and the obsessive qualities of the human mind as it attempts to organize reality.