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MONDAY

The video projections by the Canadian-born, Los Angeles–based artist Euan Macdonald aren’t very long; none of the five now showing at the Numark Gallery exceed two-and-a-half-minutes. But the artist’s knack for the unexpected elicits a sense of wonder. Sometimes Macdonald uses trickery, as when he duplicates a moving image of a jumbo jet and follows the planes as they glide across a blank, blue sky. In another short, he films a figure lying in a hammock; the net sways with increasing speed, and the video ends with a satisfyingly amusing punch line. But the show’s most eloquently understated work is Untitled (Ball in Puddle), in which a soccer ball drifts atop a muddy pond, moving into and out of a solar reflection as if it were a celestial body during an eclipse. The exhibition runs through Thursday, Sept. 9, and can be seen from the street during the gallery’s off hours at the Numark Gallery, 625 E St. NW. Free. (202) 628-3810. (Louis Jacobson)