Leora Laor's photographs at the Stephen Daiter Gallery are among the few digitally manipulated pictures I have seen that add to conventional photography and transform reality in an exciting and powerful way.

The artist has shot scenes with a long lens in a public park in Jerusalem with a video camera. She then used a computer to extract still images and work on their textures and colors. This has caused a superficial resemblance to the work of fellow-Israeli photographer Michal Rovner, though Laor's art is less conceptual and more than able to stand on its own visually.

Her pictures extract from common postures, gestures and deployments in landscape an atmosphere of apocalypse. Look at the work long enough and the images collapse again into the everyday. But they never quite lose all of their visionary aura, and as a result we see how the extraordinary is consistently based in the ordinary.

Some of the images are merely theatrical, when we feel the artist straining toward the mythic. But more often Laor succeeds in taking the posture or gesture beyond its immediate circumstances--so that the specific seems to aspire naturally toward the universal.

The artist exhibited frequently in the 1980s. After an absence, she resumed photographing only in the last five years. This is her first solo show in Chicago, and it's a strong introduction to a gifted artist in her 50s.

It will be fascinating to see where the work goes from here.

At 311 W. Superior St., 312-787-3350.

Adelheid Mers' "Early Adopters," at the 3Arts Gallery, is a collaborative project. Several artists--Michael X. Ryan, Deb Sokolow, Adam Brooks, Mathew Wilson, Isil Egrikavuk--contribute actual works, and other artists post online reports (at http://adelheidmers.org). >
The theme of the show is the art community itself, with each piece reflecting on or questioning different aspects. It sounds like a show by artists for artists. But the wide range of approach and tone in the works succeeds in bringing them into a wider realm and into the perception of even casual viewers.

Deb Sokolow's narrative drawings about a critic who disappears has the widest appeal. As she did in a recent show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, she tells (and illustrates) a story with the apparent innocence of children's books and old-time movie serials. This plays more engagingly than anything else on view, yet it's decidedly personal, not merely crowd-pleasing.

By comparison, the rest of the pieces on view can seem solipsistic (Ryan), whimsical (Brooks and Wilson), more suited to broadsides (Egrikavuk) or dryly academic (Mers).

But the shifts in tone, from earnest to zany, help raise the corporate enterprise to something wonderfully inclusive and unpredictable.

Anyone with an interest in the idea of an art community should see this.

At 1300 N. Dearborn Pkwy., 312-944-6250.

"Across Time" is a successful, new interactive video installation commissioned from Chicago sculptor Lincoln Schatz by the Spertus Museum.

It's on display in the first of two places it will be sited, in the current Spertus lobby. The piece will, among other things, record the construction of the Spertus' building to the north, where it will move upon the building's completion in 2007.

Two abutting video screens now hang from the ceiling. They record and display images from two cameras, one of which is attached to the monitors in the lobby, the other to the Spertus' roof. Viewers' movement in front of the screens activates the work, which randomly projects live images that are combined with footage retrieved from the present day as well as the past.

The combination of scenes inside and out is achieved largely through superimposition and fades. The images themselves are soft, hazy and pale-colored. This looks anodyne, though its easy gratification is a way of drawing viewers into a layering of time that requires some effort to sort out.

At present, the database has stored recordings only since groundbreaking for the new building on Oct. 9. So only a few memories repeat.

However, as the project goes forward, more and will be stored, with repeats becoming less frequent. As the museum grows, so does the complexity of the piece, demanding it be seen again and again.

At 618 S. Michigan Ave., 312-322-1747.

Leora Laor at the Stephen Daiter Gallery through Oct. 29.

Adelheid Mers at the 3Arts Gallery through Oct. 27.

Lincoln Schatz at the Spertus Museum in an open run.

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aartner@tribune.com