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Artists tackle sports images at Andy Warhol Museum

As a young awkward and painfully shy growing up in South Oakland, Andy Warhol may not have been good at team sports. But it has grown to become as famous as any sports figure was in his day. And, in fact, he photographed and even painted a fairly large number of sports prominence in 1977 when the art collector Robert Weisman commissioned him portraits of famous athletes such as boxer Muhammad Ali, basketball giant Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and golf legend Jack Nicklaus.

The Andy Warhol Museum combines the two seemingly opposite hobbies - sports and art - in the current exhibition "mixed signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in sports."

Despite the changes in attitudes about the sexual and social identity in recent decades, the secular image of the male athlete as aggressive, overtly heterosexual, hyper-competitive is subject and emotionally remote.

The work presented in this exhibition offers an alternative view of masculinity and sport by exploring stereotypes, rituals and specialized equipment of this world dominated by men.Each of the 15 artists included examines how masculinity is performed and presented in a sporting context.

For example, Marcelino Goncalves "painting" Receiver "is a football player sexually ambiguous enthusiastically cheering on the sidelines, questioning the underlying implications of sport and its connection to male bonding.

Hank Willis Thomas song "Something to stand on: the third phase" is a version of all-too-familiar "Jumpman", the famous image of Michael Jordan leaping silhouette of a basket used to promote products of Air Jordan, and made a statement on male virility as related to sports. Catherine Opie And as if this college jocks boys in a poster advertising Abercrombie and Fitch with his photographs, which are each filled with equal parts intensity and a subtle underlying sexuality.

Similarly, Collier Schorr is "Cowboy Anonymous" presents a young rodeo cowboy in a position of trust equal to the Opie football players - is another sport that can not be that common.

Paul Pfeiffer in a sharpening of ordinary game of basketball NBA TV to create a shock-still life of a basketball game with both his play "John 3:16." To create the piece, carefully handled and Pfeiffer retired 5000 digital photo frames, removing the presence of athletes in the field, leaving only the ball, which seems to be defying gravity as it soars through the air on a tiny video monitor.The resulting image of this nervousness basketball only has a trance and is difficult to turn.

New Works by Brian Jungen Go on View in the AGO's Henry Moore ...

TORONTO.- Canadian artist Brian Jungen, internationally renowned for creating artwork that repurposes objects from contemporary culture to reflect aboriginal symbols and traditions, exhibits new work at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) this spring. Presented in celebration of Jungen’s receipt of the $25,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO in 2010, Brian Jungen: Tomorrow, Repeated features seven works by Jungen exhibited alongside works by legendary British sculptor Henry Moore in the AGO’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre. The exhibition will be on view through August 7, 2011.

The works in Tomorrow, Repeated build upon the sculptural shape-shifting in which Jungen’s previous work engaged: four works feature animal hides stretched and mounted over cut-up car parts and displayed on white chest freezers; other works include police barricades built from Douglas fir, and prints made from hide left over after the artist cut out circular shapes for drum skins.

Many of the works included in the exhibition were created during an exhibition at Vancouver’s Catriona Jeffries Gallery between November 2010 and January 2011, when Jungen turned the gallery into his provisional workshop, creating and installing works throughout its run.

“Brian Jungen is an artist of international significance whose work challenges us to merge images, objects, traditions, and geographies that we might consider to be worlds apart,” says Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO. “It is with this spirit of connection that we present Jungen’s works alongside those of Henry Moore, another artist whose visionary blending of divergent sculptural traditions shaped a new visual language for his time.”

“When Brian Jungen came to the AGO to receive the Iskowitz Prize last spring, he responded immediately to the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre,” says Michelle Jacques, the AGO’s acting curator of Canadian Art. “Tomorrow, Repeated offers the viewer a chance to consider two artists who, although separated by time and geography, share a connection to non-European sculptural tradition, an astute understanding of sculptural form, and an intimate relationship to their materials.

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