People love to ponder the absence of people. Take Life After People, a documentary about how the world would look if humanity up and died, and the most watched program ever on the History Channel when it aired in 2008. Or take the paintings and drawings in Patte Loper’s last solo show at Platform Gallery, Let Our Beauty Ease Your Grief, featuring solemn-looking deer standing confusedly in posh apartments and on abandoned film sets and construction sites, awkwardly navigating our ruins and relics. Loper’s art often pictures other species but triggers the inevitable thought: Humankind is one strange animal. (Platform Gallery, 114 Third Ave S, www.platformgallery.com, 11 am–5:30 pm, free)