While no one has yet been so bold as to declare the strong art-market recovery a new boom, this week's gallery openings echo one of the industry's most bullish eras — the late 1980s — with blockbusters by Brice Marden, Robert Rauschenberg, and Francesco Clemente (at Mary Boone, of all places) on tap. Meanwhile, midcareer artists, like Wangechi Mutu (at Gladstone), Carey Young (at Paula Cooper), and Mark Leckey (at Gavin Brown), will have the opportunity to rise closer to lasting fame. Looking for a more recent dash of irrational exuberance? Head to L&M, which is hosting a miniature survey of Damien Hirst's much-coveted medicine cabinets: the first stop on a comeback tour?

THURSDAY

Ana Mendieta, "Documentation and Artwork, 1972-1985" at Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, through December 11, galerielelong.com

What would the recent canonization of performance art have looked like if Ana Mendieta — who died in 1985, at the age of 36 — were alive to participate in it? Just two years younger than that movement's mascot, Marina Abramovic, Mendieta fled Cuba early in herlife, settling in Iowa. Like Abramovic, she started as a painter, but the parallels end there: while the Belgrade-born star went on to conceive work that (with a few exceptions) was designed to operate inside gallery walls, Mendieta often staged her performative actions outdoors, imprinting her body on a beach and snapping a photo, or buryingherself in mud and posing for one. This show, Lelong's eight posthumousshow of her work, includes material from her archives alongside newly restored films.

Paulina Olowska, "Applied Fantastic," at Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, through December 4, opening Thursday, October 28, 6–8 p.m., metropicturesgallery.com

For her second show at Metro Pictures, this Polish artist shifts her focus from the graphic design of Cold War propaganda to the knitting patterns of Cold War sweaters, in new paintings that are based on decades-old Polish postcards bearing designs for the garments. Thanks to experts she hired in Poland, the sweaters will also be on display, sporting designs that range from Mary Heilmann-style controlled masses of color to intricate, hard-edged Tomma Abts-esque abstractions.

Brice Marden, "Letters," at Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, and "Painting 1961–1964," at 526 West 22nd Street, through December 23, opening Thursday, October 28, 6–8p.m., matthewmarks.com

At Matthew Marks's palatial 522 West 22nd Street space, Brice Marden is presenting new work inspired by 11th century calligraphy that he encountered on a visit to the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The seven paintings and more than 30 drawings comprise the largest body of work that the painter has made since his slow-burning 1991 "Cold Mountain" series. Next door, Marks is showing work from the early 1960s. Painted as a student at Yale and a struggling Jewish Museum guard in New York, they already seem to embody the strange, moving Minimalism that Marden would hone over the next half century.

FRIDAY

Jim Lee, "Woodshedding," at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, 21 Orchard Street, opening Friday, October 29, 6–8 p.m., nicellebeauchene.com

It is easy enough to rattle off the artists that inform this ascendant Brooklyn–based artist's work. Its committed insouciance, for instance, is pure Richard Tuttle, and its playful, irregular shapes channel Blinky Palermo. Some abstractions could be the work of Suzan Frecon, or Ellsworth Kelly on drugs. But the manifold diversity of his constructions (foam boxes, ovals of Masonite) and their irreverent titles — "Some Tongue" and "Bang Royal," are two new ones — reveal an artist nimbly reconfiguring his heroes, impatient to join their idiosyncratic ranks.

Collier Schorr, "Journals & Notebooks," at 303 Gallery, 547 West 21st Street, through December 4, opening Friday, October 29, 6–8 p.m., 303gallery.com

Collier Schorr began at 303 not as an artist but an intern in the 1980s — one of her first jobs was to guard a Jeff Koons basketball-filled fish tank, a recent New York magazine profile revealed. In this new show, the precision-minded conceptual photographer is continuing her exploration of life in the German town of Schwäbisch Gmünd, photographing the female figure, which, a press release says, "harkens both end of the War, the end of German History and renewal." There are more immediate, straightforward works, too: a small banner at the entrance of the show will greet visitors with this news: "The Fucking War Is Over."