Untitled 2001

Jasper Johns made this untitled print with etching and aquatint, though when, I don’t know. What is clear, is that he’s thinking about the printmaking process itself. Johns’ approach involves accumulation, layering images and marks on top of each other. There's a panel of vertical stripes, a family portrait, a swirling image and a panel showing diagrammatic tools. He prints these shapes in a smoky grey. Then, he’s added this granular texture that fills the space between the images, almost like a spatter, but controlled, like it’s raining indoors. You can imagine him working on the plate, adding acid to bite into the metal, proofing it, changing it, proofing it again. The whole thing is about a back and forth, a movement through time. I can't help but think of Rauschenberg's use of found imagery as a possible reference here. It's as though the work embraces a conversation between process and representation, leaving space for us to engage with its ambiguity.