NEW YORK—Loud, dynamic geometric patterns are what grab your eye in the work of Brooklyn-based artist Rico Gatson. But it is his powerful and unsettling exploration of themes of race and identity that holds your attention. This ability to combine the visually playful with controversial messages is a paradigm of Gatson’s art.

The works in “Dark Matter,” Gatson’s fifth solo show at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, on view through March 14, are no exception. The exhibition’s crown jewel is Spirit, Myth, Ritual, and Liberation (2008), a video installation originally created for the New Orleans biennial Prospect.1. The piece adapts scenes from Gimme Shelter, the 1970 Maysles brothers documentary about the Rolling Stones that chronicles the murder of Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old African American spectator at the Stones’ infamous Altamont Free Concert. It also incorporates a violent episode involving the Black Panthers from Jean-Luc Goddard’s 1968 film Sympathy for the Devil. Gatson mixes the two movies into a kaleidoscopic vision, with the scene of Hunter’s murder projected on multiple white Plexiglas panels on the gallery walls and the Panthers on the floor. Soulful music including “In the Upper Room” by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and blues singer Son House’s “Death Letter Blues” provides an eerie soundtrack that heightens the brutality of the images.

Also on display, in a separate room, are paintings and sculptures by the artist. Using a stark palette of mostly white, black, and gray, the paintings manipulate positive and negative space to depict silhouettes of figures and countries. In Light Panel #1 (2008), Gatson draws inspiration from President Obama; a glitter-encrusted likeness of the newly inaugurated president sits in a lower corner of the work. Florescent lights hang on upper and lower levels of the panel, which is shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece — perhaps referencing a missing piece in American history.

Gatson once again plays with geometry in Nigeria Power (2009). The octagonal canvas features a small silhouette of the African country in the center, surrounded by thick rays of white, black, and gray radiating out to the edges. Conjuring the nation’s turbulent history, the work posits Nigeria as both a radiant black star and a giant, vulnerable bull’s-eye.

Here are the artist’s suggestions for other shows to see around New York:

1. Susan Rothenberg at Sperone Westwater, through April 11
“There's a psychology and seriousness to Rothenberg’s work that I've always responded to. The new paintings are no exception.”

2. Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Black at Jack Shainman Gallery, through March 14
“I love the way Thomas delves into marketing strategies and ‘branding’ to address difficult histories concerning race and identity.”

3. Georg Herold: Weekend U at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, through March 21
“I'm just a big fan of this artist and work. There is an effortlessness to the way that he works with different materials, especially wood.”

4. Ben Jones: The New Dark Age at Deitch Projects, through February 28
“I respond to Jones’s layering of both the literal and the conceptual, as well as to the psychedelia. I also love the hand-crafted quality of the objects, which look slick until you get close.”

5. The Mood Back Home: An Exhibition Inspired by Womanhouse at Momenta Art, through March 16
“Sixteen artists who happen to be women address ‘the stubborn nature of gender-prescribed domesticity and its effect on women artists.’”