Grotjahn, as ever, is all over the place, with more paintings in the Saatchi Gallery’s King Kong–sized, beautifully installed but ultimately disappointing “Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture,” on view at its new and impressive Chelsea parade-ground space through September 13. One of the show's most worthwhile diversions is a group of large-scale works by “old-timer” Chris Martin (he's actually older than Jesus), including a cool ode to James Brown and black vinyl.

Speaking of youngsters, Vito Schnabel’s curatorial project at 20 Hoxton Square Projects, a solo exhibition of Theo A. Rosenblum titled “I Didn’t Know There Was Chicken in This Soup” and on view through August 1, sounds like an old Marx Brothers movie but isn’t nearly as funny. At first glance, the large exhibition space resembles a crowded child’s playroom full of plastic toys. But it turns out to be a satisfyingly rambunctious exhibition, a kind of dizzy pastiche of comic-book imagery, horror film, and medieval art, with a twist of Jake and Dinos Chapman thrown in.

In a more serious vein, “Keith Coventry, Painting & Sculpture Part II: Works 2002–2009,” at the museum-sized Haunch of Venison through August 15, resembles a mega-retrospective and feels kind of like a drug overdose. But I think it is meant to, filling up four vast, high-ceilinged rooms that often make the work look puny, needy, and lonesome. Still, Coventry’s angst-filled paintings, loaded with art-historical references and bows to such British greats as Hogarth and Sickert, not to mention the great Vermeer forger Hans van Meegeren, have a reliable magnetism that is quirky and unrelenting.

(On a side note, one can only wonder why the gallery, a subsidiary of Christie’s, has taken on such a colossal and costly space while the rest of the company is buttoning down. To give you an idea of the magnitude, besides the sprawling Coventry exhibition, there are separate solo shows of Adrian Ghenie and Elias Sime, as well as an installation by Richard Long, who is currently featured in a retrospective at Tate Britain.)

Design is also on the boards here in London, including in “Carlo Mollino: Interiors” at Sebastian + Barquet (which is closed, but some works are still on view through July 5), a small but fascinating glimpse into the Turin, Italy-based designer’s rocking baroque and anthropomorphic oeuvre. On display are a dozen vintage untitled Polaroids from the ’60s and ’70s depicting models posed in various stages of undress, underscoring Mollino’s obsessive nature. Also included are two major, beautiful, and rare pieces of furniture — Coffee Table, model No. 1114, circa 1950, in maple, glass, and brass, and Chair From the Casa Editrice Lattes Publishing House from 1953, in curved maple, plywood, and ash and mounted with brass joints. 

For a bigger dose of contemporary design, “Design High” at the Louise Blouin Foundation (a sister organization of Louise Blouin Media, parent company of ARTINFO), a group exhibition of both functional and dysfunctional objects from the London-based Carpenters Workshop Gallery on view through August 30, is a heady mix of 15 emerging and established designers, from Sebastian Brajkovic to Wendell Castle.

Curated by London-based Natalie Kovacs, the impressively installed, multilayered tranche of works shows off the influence of the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, a kind of Cal Arts for the ultra-hip design world where a number of the featured designers, including Brajkovic, Joris Laarman, Ralph Nauta, and Lonneke Gordijn, trained. On the far side of Holland Park, the location is a hump to get to, but if you go, don’t miss the café lunch.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.