Many a season ago, White Box Gallery, then in Chelsea, put on a Michael Portnoy-curated group show called “Critic as Grist” that included a video by Les Levine in which the artist, wearing a stern expression, informs viewers that “group shows twist the truth.” Despite Levine’s admonition, many New York galleries persist in the annual ritual of mounting the summer group show, often inviting guest curators to concoct displays that, sure, may twist the truth, but do so in intriguing, even titillating ways. The names of these exhibitions, which are opaque and downright loony-sounding as often as they are stingingly clever, are invariably worth the price of admission. (Personally, I’ve long awaited the arrival of a group show made up entirely of loaned pieces and titled “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”)

Many worthy group efforts are on view in Manhattan at the moment, including Harris Liebermans “No Bees, No Blueberries,” an absorbing ecosystem of an exhibition curated by Sarina Basta and Tyler Coburn, and Jack Shainman Gallerys bluntly titled “Works on View,” curated by Katie Rashid and notable for its inclusion of great early works by William Wegman. The accompanying slide show is a group show of some other group shows, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure.

Read about the selections below, and see images in the photo gallery at left.

“Time-Life Part II” at Taxter & Spengemann, through July 30

If, by Levine’s logic, group shows twist the truth, then this show is, well, pretty twisted. A full four group shows commingle in Taxter & Spengemann’s cavernous space, formerly Frank Stellas studio, on East 12th Street, the gallery having given itself over to presentations previously put on in three other galleries (Galerie Christine Mayer of Munich, Ritter-Zamet of London, and New York’s Wallspace) and a university (Bard Center for Curatorial Studies), as well as a one-artwork contribution from Basel gallery New Jerseyy, in the form of Nathan Carters Kuchen Kart, a friendly-looking apparatus that was used to serve pastries during Taxter & Spengemann’s opening. It’s a freewheeling installation, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell who’s who, or what comes from where, but two standout artworks in Wallspace’s section, “Obscene Soft Sounds II,” hold their own. Martha Friedmans sculpture of an arrangement of cantaloupes made from painted, cast urethane foam and placed on a low wooden plinth, manages, despite its ultra-realistic style, to transcend the workaday supermarket stack and achieve an improbable hieratic elegance. Nearby, Kate Costellos paper and cement sculpture Leg gives the unsettling impression that the floor has sprouted a limb.

“Your Gold Teeth II” at Marianne Boesky Gallery, through August 15

The press release Todd Levin has penned to accompany his whip-smart exhibition is headlined “curator’s statement,” but it might as well be called a manifesto. Levin scores points right out of the gate for quoting poet Robert Lowell that “art is always done with both your hands” and, oh, ye faint of heart, if you think this is veering perilously toward that recently and unwarrantedly criminalized word “craft,” you’re dead right — Levin comes out with it a few sentences later, after declaring that “hipness ... feels suddenly puerile, meaningless, a sham, another way of simply buying into the system.” Hey, if that means unabashed craftspeople like the late Peter Voulkos and the very much alive Toots Zynsky are on the menu, alongside artists du jour like Sterling Ruby and Roe Ethridge and blue-chip postwar masters like Bruce Nauman and Alighiero E. Boetti, all the better. But press release blah-blah aside, Levin’s show shines not for his rhetoric but for his razor-sharp and alluring juxtapositions. Two are particularly snappy. In one corner of the gallery’s largest room, a mammoth, bulbous piece of Voulkos’s wood-fired stoneware picks up on the curvy figure of a woman, standing slightly contrapuntally, as though swaying to music, in the 1982 painting by Barkley K. Hendricks, Vitamin K for Fun, that hangs next to it. In another corner, a 2008 glass vase by Zynsky, all fiery reds and oranges, is placed on a high plinth, becoming a flame that appears to have lapped at the 2009 collage by young artist Titus Kaphar that hangs above it: The collage depicts merely the top strip of Ingress well-known Grande Odalisque, the bottom half of the composition, including all of the nude’s sinuous body save for her head, having been seemingly singed away by the Zynsky. Good curating is about artworks activating each other, and so, bravo, Levin.

“Don’t Panic! I’m Selling the Collection” at Rental, through August 15

What? This Murakami diptych is $325,000?!??! That, as Katya Kazakina recently pointed out in her report on this show for Bloomberg, is a far heftier price tag than is ordinarily encountered at one of these Lower East Side joints. And it’s there because the works in this show, which include, among other things, two atmospheric Hope Atherton paintings, a Zhang Dali photo, a charming little Watteau-ish Elizabeth Peyton painting of a man caressing a portrait bust, a crisp John Wesley painting on paper of a nude brunette, and David Salle prints (available for the low low price of $1,500 apiece), have all been culled from the collections of four New Yorkers convinced to part with some of their holdings by the show’s well-connected youngster curator. She's Claire Distenfeld, 23, whose family moves in Upper East Side circles, as Kazakina tells it, and who, having already produced a show co-curated by artist Nick Poe in Chelsea gallery 7Eleven in the spring, is now rounding out her art education at Sotheby’s Institute. (Since the consigning collectors haven’t, for all the obvious reasons, publicly divulged their identities, the circumstances behind why, precisely, they’d be willing to part with these particular artworks remain hazy. However, one is tempted to picture someone pacing a well-appointed great room, index finger to chin, contemplating, “Well, do I really need so many of these Araki bondage shots?”) The exhibition is, overall, perhaps less interesting for the works on view, or their serviceable arrangement, than as a symptom of — or tactic for — galleries facing the present economic realities. There’s a certain brashness to the statement being made here: Don’t panic! There IS hope! It’s spelled s-e-c-o-n-d-a-r-y  m-a-r-k-e-t.

Jiri Kovanda: “1,2,3 at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Wallspace, through August 14

What’s a solo show doing in this group-show roundup? OK, fine, this is cheating. But if group shows twist the truth, then this slide show of group shows can twist the rules. Most important, if you’ve made it this far along in your life without knowing Czech artist Jiri Kovanda’s whimsical work, which hasn’t until now had a decent showing in New York, it’s time to change your ways. Let’s start with the new work, at Wallspace. In its concision, the show is a bit like imagist poetry. A bicycle leans against the wall, until you realize it is leaning into the wall, one of its handlebars partly submerged. Plinths of varying heights support trios of ordinary objects, in varying sizes, in which the organic meets the artificial: houseplants, flashlights, ketchup bottles. A length of string runs around the perimeter of the gallery; dangling from one end is a hammer, from the other, a plastic bag stuffed with pink marshmallows. A stack of bricks is interrupted by a layer of snail shells, in a flourish of mollusk-based surrealism of which the late master of the mussel, Marcel Broodthaers, would undoubtedly approve. The exhibition continues, or, rather, begins, at Andrew Kreps Gallery (with Kovanda’s works from the 1970s through the '90s), where a construction of wood and fur betrays a sensitivity to materials just about on par with Joseph Beuys. But the highlight here is Kovanda’s series of photographs of quotidian activities such as waiting for the phone to ring, trying to pick up girls, or suddenly dashing away from a cluster of his friends in a public square. In both its materials (humble) and its message (political, but never preachy), there is something modest and almost self-deprecating about Kovanda’s work that seems peculiarly suited to our times.

“Character Generator” at Eleven Rivington, through August 14

“What do you read, my lord?” Polonius asks Hamlet. “Words, words, words,” the troubled prince replies, accurately, if mockingly, and it’s words, whether typed on a typewriter, spoken in a video, or painted onto a rug, that are the meat of this achingly clever, impeccably installed show, curated by the Kitchens Matthew Lyons. That Murakami over at Rental may be très cher, but it hardly compares to Ronald Reagans 1983 budget, a cool $770,000,000,000. That figure appears at the lower edge of one of Christopher Knowless delicate, absorbing typewriter drawings from the ’70s and ’80s. (They call to mind similar, better-known works by Carl Andre.) A painting by Matthew Cerletty depicts, in varying fonts and scripts, the strangely evocative nonsense phrase “Not to the fact that who reads them.” The press release slyly describes Emily Roysdons cunning little sculpture as “making a startling statement that begs follow-up questions.” It’s reproduced here (see the photo gallery), so, mea culpa, the cat’s out of the bag.

“Lover” at On Stellar Rays, through July 26

As the summer months tend to lend themselves to torrid affairs, or at least some heavy flirting, the confection on view at On Stellar Rays is titled in a, let’s say, season-appropriate manner. But don’t let the catchy name fool you: It isn’t merely a tawdry 9½ Weeksstyle mood that’s being conveyed by the works on display in this show, curated by artist Kate Gilmore and gallery owner Candice Madey, although Marilyn Minters photograph of a syrupy-looking tongue forming a heart shape and Karen Heagles painting of a sloe-eyed, topless blonde smoking what might well be a post-coital cigarette would certainly fill that bill. No, most of the pieces here address love and passion in a more general, or even abstract, sense. (For the latter, see the wall-mounted sculpture by Robert Melee, in which a series of brightly colored enamel blobs spill sensuously over a pair of speakers.) According to Madey, the show was built around a 1991 photograph by Nan Goldin, Jimmy Paulette and Tabboo! undressing, NYC, which shows a half-dressed man in full makeup, posed alluringly in a doorway, and the fact that Goldin’s life has been so inextricably, and so passionately, wound up with her work as an artist. Which is to say that the show ultimately comes back to the passion inherent in artmaking itself.

“Naked!” at Paul Kasmin Gallery, through September 19

The afternoon delight angle is better explored at Paul Kasmin Gallery, in an Adrian Dannattcurated exhibition that includes works from a wide variety of eras, and in a wide variety of styles, and is entirely devoted to the human form, au natural. There’s Duncan Hannahs winsome show dancers with their come-hither looks, to begin with. And Mel Ramoss perky, poppy painting of a gal leaning on a box of Ritz crackers, and his perkier, poppier sculpture of a busty nude emerging from a banana peel. There’s Kenny Scharfs goofy Space Orgy (let it speak for itself). There’s David LaChapelles large-scale photograph of naked adolescents painted pink and cavorting in a bucolic landscape, like figures escaped from Matisses The Dance. There’s even Anne-Louis Girodet-Triosons crepuscular, subtly homoerotic depiction of a sleeping Endymion, circa 1800. While the show in Kasmin’s main space is devoted mainly to depictions of women, there’s a second, smaller gallery around the corner given over to dudes, the standout being Peter Ostrovskys 1961 double portrait of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in Tangier. In frame one, the two poets coyly cover themselves with their hands; in frame two they defiantly bare all. Much of this material is rated R, and the show is well researched, brilliantly installed, and thoroughly enjoyable. Dannatt, whose clever riposte to the New Museums “Younger Than Jesus” show, “Older than God,” is at BLT Gallery on the Lower East Side until July 31, is having a good streak.

“The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Read, through September 19

If Dannatt’s fleshly extravaganza is dominated by what feminist thinkers long ago dubbed the “male gaze,” a corrective is to be found in this tough-as-nails show at Cheim & Read. The female gaze is a penetrating one, as proved by 41 works depicting women in states ranging from reverie (Julia Margaret Camerons 1866 photograph of May Prinsep) to hilarity (Mickalene Thomass 2009 glittery and iconic A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y, made of paint and rhinestones) to ecstasy (Lisa Yuskavages 1996–97 painting Heart) to catatonia (Vanessa Beecrofts 2008 supine sculpture Blonde Figure Lying) to stern aloofness (Berenice Abbotts 1926-30 photograph of Mme. Theodore Van Rysselberghe). The most intriguing is, somewhat fittingly, secreted away in a back hall behind a velvet rope: Francesca Woodmans creepily surrealistic photograph from 1975–78 of a trio of naked ladies, a latter-day Three Graces, holding up photographs of faces to hide their own. What unites the works across eras and mediums is a kind of in-your-faceness, a sexy, defiant intelligence. Something about the show brings to mind a line in one of Philip Roths Zuckerman novels (sorry, gals, he may be a profoundly phallocentric writer, but …) that describes a woman whose “intellect goes well with her gun moll looks.” Louise Bourgeois, who offers a 2004 sculpture of two fabric figures getting it on in a glass vitrine, serves as the show’s resident genius, its minence grise.

Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe: Black Acid Co-op” at Deitch Projects, through August 15

Another exception? Yes. But if the inclusion of this particular exhibition can’t be defended on its merits (it can!), consider that it’s a project made by two artists. So, purists, settle down. This is the most popular exhibition in New York at the moment. It’s tough to think of a publication that hasn’t sung its praises. Remember how a few months ago these same magazines and newspapers were all about late Picasso? Well, now they’re into an elaborate rabbit's warren of rooms littered with detritus like charred husks of chairs and dubious-looking canisters, as well as the rafts of empty Sudafed boxes and jerry-rigged laboratory implements (clusters of grimy beakers; snaky, yellowing tubes) that testify to its imaginary denizens’ métier: the making of crystal meth. But a funky, drug-making concern isn’t all that’s there. Turn a corner and you wander into a sort of makeshift library complete with a full-on surveillance kit and tall metal shelves well stocked with what appear to be DIY books, their spines inscribed in thick black Sharpie with titles running the gamut from paranoia to plain ole doomsday thinkin’. Scurry up a set of stairs and suddenly you’re in a Chinatown shop dedicated to random doodads, like weird crystals and roots that line a glass display case. Another room, glaringly lit by overhead fluorescent tubes, is lined with sculptures that look like mannequin heads gone awry, topped with wigs. Another room — enterable, like most, through a hole blasted in one of its walls — is a red-carpeted, white-walled gallery space featuring artworks, presumably by Freeman and Lowe, on its unsullied walls. It feels like the last place standing (a museum?) in a bombed-out city. What, precisely, is “Black Acid Co-Op,” besides the continuation of two other, similar installations by Freeman and Lowe in Miami and Marfa, Texas? Is it a hideout for subculture-types? A Merry Prankster-style joke? A junkie’s crash pad? It’s none and all of the above. Maybe Freeman and Lowe have created something tantamount to a dark fun house for adults — manically creative, rich in cultural references, a slightly queasy-making but strangely satisfying trip.

Sarah Douglas is Senior Correspondent for ARTINFO, Art+Auction, and Modern Painters.