Remember postcards? Before Facebook, we sent them to our friends to keep in touch. Think even further back, and you may recall the heavier, deluxe lenticular postcards, whose 3-D image changed as you shifted the card in your hand. Rub your fingernail against the image surface, and there was a satisfying “brrrrup” sound. Margeaux Walter uses the same effect in her photo-based works in the group show Synthetic. Walter’s panels are little narrative episodes. In one, a bevy of hot-tubbing ladies of a certain age (the Real Housewives demo) are roused from boozy stupor by the arrival of a buff cabana boy. Look more carefully at the quartet, and you’ll discern the same model (Walter herself) disguised with different wigs and swimsuits, rather like Cindy Sherman. In another single-panel triptych, a hapless woman drops her precious cellphone in the toilet. And who of us doesn’t know someone who’s experienced the same terrifying slip? Though “synthetic” implies a flight from realism and traditional themes, Walter’s work has a recognizable and almost documentary quality–only heightened and brightened. Also on view: more high-gloss, summery works by Susan Dory, Elizabeth Gahan, Liz Hickok, Shane McAdams, and Liz Tran. BRIAN MILLER

Tue., June 21, 6-8 p.m.; Mondays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: June 21. Continues through Sept. 2, 2011