Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports, is an exhibition about contemporary art that deals with the subject of the male athlete.  This particular artistic theme has become increasingly prevalent during the past several years, building upon several decades of discourse about identity and gender. Including artists ranging from such well-known individuals as Matthew Barney, Catherine Opie, Collier Schorr, and Sam Taylor-Wood to emerging talents such as Shaun El C. Leonardo and Joe Sola, Mixed Signals demonstrates that the male athlete is a far more ambiguous, polyvalent figure in our collective cultural imagination than ever before. Using elements of wit, sarcasm, and controversy, these artists challenge cultural assumptions that gender is ever natural or innate.  Instead, they emphasize the many ways masculinity is always performed, coded, and socially constructed, perhaps even more so in the spectacular, media-saturated field of sports.

Mixed Signals:  Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York. Guest curator for the exhibition is Christopher Bedford.  The exhibition, tour, and catalogue are made possible, in part, by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the iCI Advocates, the iCI Partners, Agnes Gund, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, and Barbara and John Robinson.

Mixed Signals is an expanded version of Contemporary Projects 11:  Hard Targets--Masculinity and American Sports, an exhibition curated by Bedford, which was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.