How to show art during a pandemic? Instead of bemoaning the loss of traditional in-person viewing experiences, the first-year sculpture grad students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago founded Perennial Space, a collaborative web gallery now presenting its second and third exhibitions. The site is refreshingly easy to navigate, inventively themed, and complete with such excellently titled shows as The First 30 Seconds in the Morning Before You Remember Who You Are. I wish I’d written that phrase. Fresh displays include Cara Dunkerley’s artwork-in-a-car and FÁTIMA’s soul-in-a-bowl. FeRrELL GaRrAMoNE offers intimate iPhone video musings on four-leaf clovers and other precious finds. Sungho Bae creates a not-quite-white plushy out of strangers’ dryer lint. Some work, like Charlie North’s imitation aluminum tread sheets, furrowed with mysterious grooves, begs to be seen up close, but that’s okay, too. Making do and getting by doesn’t have to mean pretending everything’s alright when it’s definitely not.

—Lori Waxman 2020-07-23 10:36 PM