Meleko Mokgosi, The Ruse of Transparency II (detail), 2009, oil on PMMA, dimensions variable. Via WORK Gallery.

As Watson distills a deep art historical knowledge, Mokgosi complicates matters. A standard wall-text becomes an intricate treatise; a double-portrait a violent distortion; and a subject interview a compelling commentary on race. In the vein of Adrian Piper, though less adversarial, Mokgosi links conceptualism to race. At the center of The Ruse of Transparency II, is a nude portrait of a couple of African-American descent with albinism — the absence of pigmentation of the skin and hair. Various body parts are composed on segments of shatter-proof, transparent plastic hanging from the ceiling. The transparency of the plastic constantly distracts one from the act of looking, and Mokgosi further disrupts the viewer.

Meleko Mokgosi, The Ruse of Transparency II (detail), 2009, oil on PMMA, dimensions variable. Via WORK Gallery.

The couple’s faces are layered atop too many feet and limbs for just two people. Their identical skin tone meanwhile trumps the impulse to sort and assign these parts. The exclusion of genitalia is less Sojourner Truth at the Dinner Party and more a purposeful confusion of gender to stymie further attempts at classification. All of these visual miscues — African-American facial features with white skin, too many body parts for just one couple, and uncertainty of what is male and what is female — frustrate the culturally conditioned norms of identifying others by race, sex and thereby, class.

Mokgosi doesn’t leave the viewer completely adrift, however. In a stirring interview, Travon Edwards, the female half of the couple, recounts how she was raised by a supportive grandmother, but was made aware of her difference by the outside world, which labeled her an abomination. Neither black in skin tone nor white in heritage, Edwards occupies a liminal space in which self-determination is constantly under attack by external forces, both for what she is and what she lacks. Mokgosi’s surface miscues have protected her from the world’s judgmental gaze within the least likely of places — an art gallery.

Painting by such relatively young artists could easily translate into a glorified BFA exhibition but Mokgosi and Watson emphatically defy that expectation by producing compelling, mature contributions to the field. They are willing to create serious art that consciously considers its critical consequences for society. Founded just under two years ago by Walker Waugh and Emily Driscoll, WORK Gallery is clearly setting a high standard of quality, risk-taking exhibitions for any establishment that may wish to join it in Red Hook.