Click on the orange words to listen to the the podcast of Indiana Humanities and iMOCA‘s INconversation with Christopher Bedford.

Click here to see images from the opening reception.

This exhibition takes on sports and masculinity as its central themes in a collection put together especially for iMOCA by Christopher Bedford, chief curator of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Images of women—from the goddess Venus to the Virgin Mary—have long been a classic subject in visual arts. In Hard Targets, varied treatments of masculinity get a turn in the spotlight. Hard Targets seeks to revise and complicate our time-honored stereotypes of male athletes and athleticism (as aggressive, heterosexual, hypercompetitive, and remote) by presenting alternative, possibly more democratic, interpretations of subjects frequently revealed to us only in authorized and frankly commercial images. The artists in the show instead investigate sports and masculine identity through topics ranging from biology to business to celebrity, played out in locker rooms, stadiums, and advertising campaigns.

In the videos, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and installations of Hard Targets, you’ll find projects that are funny, irreverent, sexy, incisive, and poignant. Featured artists in the show are: Mark Bradford, Cary Leibowitz, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie,  Joe Sola, Hank Willis Thomas, and Jonas Wood.

In their examinations, you’ll discover how the ways we view and consume sports stars and athletic events are structured by systems of desire and identification more complex (and more fascinating) than most spectators and fans ever realize.

Images:
Hank Willis Thomas
Scarred Chest, 2003
Lambda photograph
60 X 40 inches
Courtsey of the Artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

Joe Sola
Saint Henry Composition
Single Channel Video with sound
Courtsey of the Artist, Blackston, NY, Nye and Brown, Los Angeles