Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror

In the early 2000s, Johns returned to numbers and to sculpture, a motif and a medium he had largely put aside in the late 1960s. His renewed interest was inspired by his desire to cast in a more durable material his Sculp-metal relief Numbers (1964), which is on display at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Although he never ultimately cast the original painting, he pieced together a new version of it in wax segments, which he developed through inventive formal and technical processes. Some numerals bear the crisp outline of stencils, whereas in other places Johns melted the wax to create painterly drips or silkscreened and imprinted passages of type taken from newspapers. He ultimately cast two monumental editions in bronze and aluminum, the latter of which hangs at one end of this gallery.

Over the next several years, Johns repurposed the wax used in the casting process of the large sculptures, cutting it up and rearranging the pieces into nineteen smaller sculptures, including the four freestanding versions exhibited here. Each double-sided work explores different aspects of the original composition, as well as the inherent qualities of its material. Displayed in this space, the silver, bronze, and copper objects reveal precise and sensual details in changing natural light.