At a distance John Reth’s intriguingly ambivalent Excerpts From the Land of Plenty: Lunch Turds, part of a group show at Betty Rymer, looks like a pile of shiny black rocks about to tumble off a pedestal. A closer look reveals round forms wrapped in electrical tape, each with a PLU sticker indicating the type of produce rotting inside. Dianna Frid’s more intricate and complex “To Go to the Moon” series also uses common materials–thread, tinfoil, tape–to examine contemporary attitudes. In Projection #2 stitched orange canvas and clear plastic sheeting form the grid of a hemisphere on a wall, and lines of electrical tape radiating from its base extend the circular form onto the floor. Tethered to the wall is what Frid calls a blurring device–a wrapping-paper tube, one end of it covered in waxed paper. Anything looked at through this telescope would be a fuzzy close-up; the fun is not in seeing exactly what the moon looks like but in considering what it might be like if we ever went there. A window sliced from the plastic around the equatorial line frames a faded black-and-white photo showing only the top few cars of a Ferris wheel beneath a bleached sky, perhaps a reminder that remembering how it felt to be on top of the world is more important than the specifics of when you were there or what you saw. School of the Art Institute Betty Rymer Gallery, Columbus and Jackson, through July 11. Hours are 10 to 5 Monday through Saturday; 312-443-3703.