“Wish You Were Here” at ADDS DONNA

Christina Leung’s cookies were staler, Jo Hormuth’s sculpture had shifted position and there were several new works on display, but the show that opened at ADDS DONNA earlier this month was the same “Wish You Were Here” that opened at the Garfield Park gallery in October—and in September. It was also different.

“Wish You Were Here” has evolved approximately ten times during its run, estimates Kaylee Rae Wyant, one of the six artists who direct ADDS DONNA. Some of the artworks, and the show’s focus on time, movement and stasis, remain constant. But the cocurators added and removed works, holding receptions to commemorate big changes, such as the removal of a large-scale Lauren Carter sculpture that provided the gallery’s only illumination when it was installed.

“Wish You Were Here” encompasses a clever variety of media, including a GIF on the gallery’s website and a plaque on its water tower (pictured), and its ingenious premise enables viewers to enjoy the art on multiple levels. First-time visitors can appreciate Ama Saru and Hsiao Chen’s witty The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (2009), a set of 30 Champagne flutes. The glasses’ bent plastic straws form fragmented words from art-theory texts, so that drinkers sipping from disco and urse must find each other for the piece to make sense.

Repeat visitors can recall the absent pieces as they contemplate what’s in front of them, and see what stayed take on new meanings. Only now can one view Hormuth’s found postcards of Illinois’s Lake Bloomington alongside Laura Mackin’s postcard installation tracing a few decades on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Allowing an exhibition to change over time isn’t a new strategy, but I wish more galleries would try it.