In the work of Jasper Johns, “decoy” is both a noun and a verb.

It is also a title: one that Johns chose for two print editions and two paintings made between 1970 and 1973. Broadly regarded as major, transitional works in Johns’s long career, the works called Decoy both summarize and foretell significant motifs, strategies, and questions issuing from the artist’s cosmos of imagery “the mind already knows,” often seen but “not looked at, not examined.” 

For decades, Johns has cannibalized familiar forms from mainstream culture, art history, and his own work, both courting and refusing straightforward interpretation. Cultivating an aura of mystery while also leaving a trail of clues, Johns has captivated generations of critics, curators, and collectors with his unique ability to expose the enigmas embedded in everyday objects, signs, and symbols. 

This is an exhibition about Jasper Johns’s Decoys and about how Jasper Johns decoys, which is to lure and/or misdirect. Arranged radially around the central hub of the DECOYS gallery, this exhibition focuses on Johns’s affinities for doubling (SEEING DOUBLES), self-referentiality (CONCEAL/REVEAL), and trompe l’oeil––illusionistic tactics that fool the eye (THE “TRAP” OF LOOKING). Privileging formal correspondence over strict chronology, this exhibition suggests that Decoy holds keys to unlocking some of the secrets in Johns’s work, which can teach us to see the “differences and samenesses” between things that appear to be––but are not––the same.