“Behold” here, in this exhibition, is an invitation to see the intertwining of aesthetic concerns and the rigors of political and historical exploration. I was talking the other day to a class of students about what motivates my looking at art and I unabashedly talked about beauty, about visual art that is beguiling and celebratory without caveat or disclaimer. It’s difficult to make an argument for work solely on those terms these days. And, to be clear, I won’t exactly make that argument here, but a group show now on at Welancora gallery in Brooklyn doesn’t look askance at beauty or pretend that it can’t coexist with conversations about race and power. Behold features five artists, but for my purposes three of them, Oasa DuVerney, Roberto Visani, and Chris Watts, make objects that are visually alluring, but wrestle with more than just pleasing the eye. (The other two artists, Sana Musasama and Komikka Patton, here don’t offer work that brings these tensions into palpable apprehension for the purposes of this review.)
