NEW YORK—Pity the employees of New York galleries. Because last week’s inaugural Gallery Week kept many spaces open on Sunday and Monday — making it more of a Gallery Weekend, really — some of them have not had a day off in almost two weeks. Thankfully, rest is a mere three days away. (Though their Lower East Side and Brooklyn brethren will have to wait four, since they work through Sunday.) Following the maelstrom of openings last week, few galleries are debuting new shows this week, but those that are have lined up some potential gems that will make venturing into the brisk spring air all the more rewarding.

FRIDAY

“A Vernacular of Violence,” at Invisible-Exports, 14 Orchard Street, through June 20, opening Friday, May 14, 6–8 p.m.

There has never been a shortage of great, violent artists. Caravaggio was a murderer, Bacon was a drunken brawler, and Surrealism’s dictator Andre Breton once charmingly told Frida Kahlo, “If you leave me, I will destroy you.” Great, violent contemporary art is a bit rarer, though. “Pictures of violence wallpaper our lives, and yet they seem remote, aloof,” this show’s press release states. Devoted to representations of violence, the display was conceived following conversations generated by artist Lisa Kirk, who joins Eric Baudelaire, Rita Sobral Campos, Walid Raad, and Claire Fontaine, the Parisian collective that has become a fixture in New York group shows recently. Also presenting work is theorist Sylvère Lotringer, who is no stranger to the politics of violence: in 2009, his Semitext(e) imprint released the Invisible Committee’s pamphlet, The Coming Insurrection, which right-wing ideologue Glenn Beck has called a “dangerous book.”

Bjarne Melgaard, “The Synthetic Slut,” at Greene Naftali Gallery, 508 West 26th Street, through June 9, opening Friday, May 14, 6–8 p.m.

New York Times critic Roberta Smith tagged Melgaard with her “bad-boy” label when reviewing his 2008 show at Greene Naftali, but she seems to have meant it as a term of endearment. “It’s a big, beautiful, materialistic mess,” she wrote at the time. Early indications — for instance, the absurdist title — suggest that Melgaard will offer up another round of his sloppy, occasionally childlike, generally pleasing art.

SATURDAY

Richard Prince, “T-Shirt Paintings: Hippie Punk,” at Salon 94 Bowery, 243 Bowery, through June 26, opening Saturday, May 15, 6–8 p.m.

“Tiffany Paintings,” Prince’s new show at Gagosian uptown, appears to be the work of an artist who has run out of ideas, combining the advertising imagery that made him famous with the half-baked painting he has peddled since finishing his remarkable "Nurse" pictures. Gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn is offering up a little-known section of Prince’s work in her new Bowery space: paintings the artist has made for years on stretched T-shirts, borrowing imagery from some of his most famous bodies of work and maybe providing a chance to remember his initial appeal. If nothing else, it offers a chance to see the new Salon 94 space before it is renovated this summer.

“Escape from New York,” 24 1/2 Van Houten Street, Paterson, New Jersey, through June 19, opening Saturday, May 15, 3–9 p.m.

In 1776, George Washington bravely led the fledgling Continental Army out of New York into New Jersey, barely escaping the murderous British army. Nearly 234 years later, curator Olympia Lambert has launched a similarly valiant project, bringing work by a scrappy band of 43 emerging artists to the cavernous factory building formerly used by the Fabricolor dye company, in Paterson, New Jersey. Expect rising talents like Kate Gilmore alongside expert marksman William Powhida and conceptual intelligence expert Jennifer Dalton. Stay a while: Paterson offers some of the metropolitan area’s finest Middle Eastern cuisine and impressive bargain shopping, next door to your author’s beloved hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Trains to Paterson are available every hour from Penn Station.