ONE + 1: Stephen Bezas & Jasper Johns

The exhibition unites two distinct practices that interrogate language, form, and perception, tracing a generational arc in which Johns’s historic engagement with symbols and signs, from targets and numbers to maps and flags, reshaped modern art’s understanding of representation and meaning. Bezas, today, extends that legacy by presenting a contemporary exploration of language and structure, where graphic precision and conceptual play converge.

Born in New York City in 1949, Stephen Bezas studied closely with Chuck Close early in his development, and his practice soon moved between painting, photography, and architecture, often anchored by the structural logic of the grid. In Bezas’ newest series, each canvas is organized through a systematic pattern of points representing letters of the alphabet. Letters are encoded visually using color, shape, dot placement, or directional cues within neatly organized grids, inviting viewers to decode and discover language embedded in abstraction. The disciplined grid format creates a clean, graphic space where symbols operate both as formal elements and as latent carriers of meaning, making language itself a subject of perceptual inquiry.

Jasper Johns’ work has long probed the mechanics of signification, re-presenting familiar imagery to make the act of seeing a central subject. Born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1930 and raised in South Carolina, he rose to prominence in the mid-1950s in New York after returning from service in the Korean War. Influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s embrace of cultural icons, Johns rejected the heroic gesture of Abstract Expressionism and instead turned to preexisting symbols such as flags, numbers, targets, and alphabets. By layering these motifs, he treated the artist’s mark as merely another sign within a broader system rather than a declaration of identity, collapsing distinctions between mass culture, consumerism, and fine art. His paintings and prints encourage a reconsideration of how symbols function, not merely as icons but as dynamic sites of interpretation. When presented alongside Bezas’ coded lexicon of signs, a compelling dialogue emerges around how visual systems organize language, memory, and experience.

One + 1 invites viewers into a conceptual and visual encounter with symbol and structure, from Johns’ storied investigations into the nature of iconography to Bezas’ precise, grid-based translations of language. Together, the works foreground Upsilon Gallery’s commitment to exhibitions that bridge historical significance with current artistic inquiry.

The exhibition will be on view at Upsilon Gallery from January 21 to February 14, 2026, at 23 East 67th Street, New York. Preview PDF is available upon request.

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