It is a week of sharp contrasts and eerie similarities on the New York art-opening beat. On the Upper East Side, newcomer Alex Zachary hosts his second show, Jeff Koons puts in his sophomore curatorial effort, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyns Salon 94 hosts two performances by Tamy Ben–Tor. Meanwhile, Chelsea plays hosts to two German women of different generations and temperaments, who are each marking their sixth show at their respective galleries.

Wednesday

Rainer Ganahl, “Language of Emigration & Pictures of Emigration,” at Alex Zachary, 16 East 77th Street, on view through April 25, opening Wednesday, March 18, 6–8 p.m.

If the current Whitney Biennial is any indication, political photography is ascendant — which would seem to provide perfect timing for a show of work by Austrian artist Rainer Ganahl, who for more than 10 years has photographed and interviewed people who fled the Nazi regime for his “Language of Emigration” project. Capturing his subjects’ new homes in subdued still lifes, and their portraits with an unassuming naturalism, Ganahl renders the political in quiet, personal terms. When, the project seems to ask, does one stop being a refugee?

Thursday

“Edward Paschke,” curated by Jeff Koons, at Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, on view through April 24, opening Thursday, March 18, 6–8 p.m.

After an inauspicious curatorial debut at the New Museum earlier this month, Jeff Koons has a chance to redeem himself with a show that is in every sense the opposite of “Skin Fruit.” Instead of hulking baubles made by contemporaries, the artist will show canvases by the late Ed Paschke, the idiosyncratic Chicagoan who employed Koons as a studio assistant in the mid-1970s. “His paintings are like drugs, but in a good way,” has Koons declared of Paschke’s radioactively colored canvases, which hide figures behind cartoon masks and funnel them through neon washes. Paschke’s a Pop artist, but obliquely. Whereas Warhol memorializes Marilyn Monroe as a postmortem icon and Wesselmann distills her sexuality for endless repetition, Paschke dresses her in a suit and throws an accordion in her hands. “Ed Paschke taught me what it meant to be a professional artist,” Koons has remarked. Quite a statement from the Puppy creator, whose vast studio has redefined artistic professionalism.

Charline von Heyl, at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, 537 West 22nd Street, on view through May 1, opening Thursday, March 18, 6–8 p.m.

“I am trying to trick myself myself, to trick my mind into being weirder,” German artist Charline von Heyl told Modern Painters in 2009. That willful eccentricity has led to some of today’s most interesting paintings, which seem to emerge from a post-Abstract-Expressionist alternate reality. Kline slashes cut across Buren stripes, hints of Guston’s organic masses abut rigorously geometric abstractions, and the occasional body appears, if only in fragments. Von Heyl has logged two to three solo shows a year over the past decade. One wonders if her remarkable streak of approachable, unrelenting invention will continue.

Ursula von Rydingsvard, “ERRĀTUS,” at Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, on view through May 1, opening Thursday, March 18, 6–8 p.m.

Solid wood oozes, flows, and crawls in Ursula von Rydingsvard’s work. Weaving together massive cedar blocks into uncannily organic forms that are alluringly tactile yet a bit dark and unsettling, she has dominated public sculpture gardens for decades. Children rush to touch and climb the works, as parents stand back, a little troubled. For her first show in New York City in four years, von Rydingsvard presents three large-scale cedar pieces. The six-foot-tall Blackened Word, 2008, stretches in ripples across more than 20 feet of floor, while Unraveling, 2007, climbs a gallery wall like dense, weighty moss — it would seem to be enacting the show’s title, the Latin for “wandering,” though one has the sense the piece knows exactly where it is going. Devotees will also want to head upstate to the Storm King Art Center on June 5, when a new work by von Rydingsvard will be unveiled, along with works by nine other artists, to celebrate the park’s 50th anniversary.

Friday and Saturday  

Tamy Ben-Tor & Miki Carmi, “Disembodied Archetypes,” at Zach Feuer Gallery, 530 West 24th Street, on view March 19 through May 1, and at Stefan Stux Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, on view March 25 through April 24. Opening performances at Salon 94, 12 East 84th Street, on Friday, March 19, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, March 20, at 4 p.m.

Learning the plans for a joint exhibition by Tamy Ben-Tor and Miki Carmi, one quickly realizes why three galleries would be required to contain it. Carmi — best known for eerie portraits of old, bald men with splotched skin — will provide new paintings and photographs, while the dependably madcap Ben-Tor will offer up new videos and a series of live performances. Both are Israeli–born; other similarities will no doubt reveal themselves within the galleries. The artists explain that the subject uniting their multi-medium efforts is “the performance of the poet as a monotonous daily routine of useless acts… that endlessly strives to deny death by the intensity of action.” Which is just about all one can ask of art.