JASPER JOHNS has been the subject of so many career surveys, narrowly conceived museum exhibitions, and critical/theoretical writings that one might be forgiven for some initial skepticism regarding the need for a big show focusing on his use of the color gray. The premise seemed symptomatic of a curatorial compulsion to occupy niches perhaps not crying to be filled. But the show’s reality obviated such ungenerous concerns: “Jasper Johns: Gray” operates as a kind of shadow retrospective, illuminating in a necrotic light a narrative underbelly that even his most attentive enthusiasts might have

David Ingenthron’s recent work might be thought of as slacker neo-surrealism, consisting as it does of meandering excursions into a strange but gentle fantasy universe where much is evoked but—purposefully, of course—little is resolved. Ingenthron drifts across mediums, styles, and formats, finally suggesting that integrity can exist within ambivalence, and that honest indecision is the best policy. The drawings, sculptures, and paintings in his recent exhibition evoke a stream of consciousness—albeit a stream that branches off into odd pools, forgets it’s a stream, or suddenly flows backward.