ANDREW M. GOLDSTEIN

"Vide-Poche" at Sculpture Center, 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, through March 28, sculpture-center.org

Held in SculptureCenter's basement — a challenging warren of a space that demands, and often rewards, last-minute site-specific innovation from artists and curators alike — "Vide-Poche" is the latest of the Long Island City kunsthalle's group shows presented through its "In Practice" program, a reliable talent-magnet that commissions new work from emerging artists. (Previous participants have included Gardar Eide Einarsson, Marianne Vitale, Agathe Snow, Marlo Pascual, and Xaviera Simmons.) Curated this time around by the doughty Fionn Meade, the show features a sestet of artists (Michele Abeles, Samuel Clagnaz, Isabelle Cornaro, Miles Huston, Charles Mayton, and Valerie Snobeck) who paste paintings on the craggy rock walls, screen mesmerizingly dense videos in oppressive corridors, and otherwise parlay the space. Look out for Cornaro's film, a piece of formalist loveliness with economic undertones that, best of all, plays at the ideal length for viewing in an exhibition: 2 minutes, or half a pop song.

"Bella Pacifica: Bay Area Abstraction, 1946 to 1963" at David Nolan Gallery, 527 West 29th Street, through February 5, davidnolangallery.com

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Reprising his role as New York's chief hierophant of California art, curator and dealer Tim Nye has teamed up again with Jacqueline Miro to bring his lens on the old Los Angeles scene — which last year resulted in the eye-zapping "Primary Atmospheres" show and the recreation of the legendary Ferus Gallery — further up on north, to San Francisco. In this first installment of a four-part exhibition series, the focus is on the milieu around the 6 Gallery, a mid-century artist cooperative that was fed both by the Dada strains coming from Europe and the color-soaked art of painters like Richard Diebenkorn. Comprising work by Bruce Conner, Jess, Jay DeFeo and other artists, the show takes things up to 1963 — the year that Marcel Duchamp arrived in Pasadena with a retrospective that landed like something out of Los Alamos.

Pierre Huyghe at Marian Goodman, 24 West 57th Street, opening January 28, through March 12, mariangoodman.com

The last time cerebral French artist Pierre Huyghe showed in New York it was as part of "theanyspacewhatever," the Guggenheim's 2008 "relational aesthetics" survey that wrapped him up with his 1990s brethren like Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Maurizio Cattelan. (Huyghe blacked out the Frank Lloyd Wright building's rotunda and had visitors navigate it wearing headlamps.) Now, fresh from receiving the Smithsonian's Contemporary Artist Award — a slightly dubious honor considering that institution's rearguard, censorious tastes — the artist will debut a film at his New York gallery that he made in Paris's old, deactivated Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, bringing in a group of role-playing actors on three freighted days: Halloween, Valentine's Day, and May Day. Whether the movie's title, "The Host and the Cloud," ends up having anything to do with the kind of computer networks that run more and more aspects of our daily lives remains to be seen.

BEN DAVIS

Michael Alan "Continual DNA" at YES Gallery, 147 India Street, Brooklyn, through February 17, yesgalleryyes.com

I'm curious to see this retrospective of work by former club promoter, Draw-a-Thon mastermind, and maker of obsessive, spidery drawings Michael Alan, at Greenpoint's YES Gallery. He once said, "I am Michael Alien, an alien who wants good and to exist with a twist of chaos and a big splash of toxic paint!" That's enough to interest me.

George Condo "Mental States" at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, through May 8, newmuseum.org

What do Phish and Kanye West have in common? They both have employed George Condo for their cover art, of course. That's the dumbest possible introduction to Condo's work, but I wrote an article about the guy a year ago for Slate, and came to the conclusion that he's the real deal. Can't wait to see his beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy world displayed in depth.

EMMA ALLEN

"Viva la Difference: Poetry Inspired by the Painting of Peter Saul," published by Off the Park Press, offtheparkpress.com

Off the Park Press's second collection of poems inspired by a single visual artist (the first took Neo Rauch as its muse), this slender volume is full of boobs and poop and gurgling and bubbling and flashes of sickly saturated color. Perfectly and delightfully Saul-ian, in other words. Personally, I can't get enough of ZieherSmith gallerist Scott Zieher's contribution, "Fatty," which begins: "Perforation-pulsing / Like a blue pimple." In my opinion it's hard to resist any work of literature with the phrase "triple va-jay-jay" in it. One more delightful passage, and I'll stop: "Language, my ass. / Morass, more ass." Yay, ekphrasis!

"Images from a Floating World: 18th & 19th Century Japanese Erotic Prints and the Echo in Modern and Contemporary Art" at Fredericks & Freiser, 536 West 24th Street, through March 5, fredericksfreisergallery.com

I'd rather that it didn't seem like I'm only interested in genital-filled art and literature, but... On view in this great show are centuries-old, carnal Japanese illustrations that depict (what was then) a new breed of "city man" ("chonin") engaged in scandalous sex acts. Paired with these are steamy works by modern and contemporary art stars, among them personal favorites Mary Reid Kelley, Mickalene Thomas, Franz West, and William Copley.

Foam Magazine, issue #25, Traces, Winter 2010, with Seba Kurtis, Willem Popelier, Ishiuchi Miyako, Robert Frank, James D. Griffioen, Gert Jan Kocken, Anni Leppälä, and the La Brea Matrix, Editor-in-chief Marloes Krijnen, foammagazine.com

This issue of the eclectic international photography magazine features portfolios that are "a reflection on representation of the past in the present." Whatever that means. But a savvy redesign (yes, I too am drooling over the new typeface) makes this season's edition of the luxe and usually absorbing publication a must-read (or at least must-peruse). The Frank portfolio is as stellar as you'd expect and I'm definitely into the subtly destroyed vernacular family snapshots in Kurtis's "Show Box" series.

DANIEL KUNITZ

"Sculpture in So Many Words: Text Pieces 1960-75" at ZieherSmith, 516 West 20th Street, through February 12, ziehersmith.com

Want to skew your life's vector slightly? Go see "Sculpture in So Many Words" at ZieherSmith and spend an utterly engrossing hour or so doing something you don't ordinarily do at a gallery — reading. Comprised mostly of ephemera — book pages, journals, announcements, fliers, early zines — the show consists of Conceptual text pieces by the likes of Robert Morris, Allison Knowles, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Dan Graham, and Joseph Beuys. Read what you find there as poems, as directives, or as cosmic messages. However you take the pieces in the show, you'll find humor as well as fuel to keep the brain fired up on a cold day.

SCOTT INDRISEK

Laurel Nakadate, "Only The Lonely" at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, through August 8, ps1.org

This young New York-based photographer and video artist has been given much of the museum’s second floor to highlight her career-long fixations: the neglected corners of the middle-aged man's psyche; the emotional flexibility of cheesy pop music; the sexual identity and confidence of girls, including, most often, herself. PS1 is also screening two of Nakadate's feature films: "Stay The Same Never Change," 2009, and "The Wolf Knife," 2010, but the showstopper is a cavernous room hung with massive prints from Nakadate's most recent series, "365 Days: A Catalogue Of Tears." As the title suggests, these are daily self-portraits taken while crying. While naysayers may find that conceit cheap on the surface, the resulting works have a rich variety; they hit all the weird, wavering emotional registers you might expect from a year's worth of highly personal photographs. Some prints are quite dark — the focal point being less Nakadate, more the bright patterns on hotel room curtains. In others, the anguish is up front and center — one, taken in the bathroom of an airplane, looks like it could be a still from a horror film. Sex and humor and pain and the conflicted nature of self-portraiture all collide here. Like much of Nakadate's work, it's smarter than you might guess at first glance. This is a woman, after all, who can drag Britney Spears's "Oops!... I Did It Again" into a highbrow context while making an uncomfortably moving comment on awkward, schlubby male desire.

SARAH DOUGLAS

León Ferrari at Haunch of Venison, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, opening January 28, through March 5, haunchofvenison.com

It still boggles the mind that the great Argentinean artist León Ferrari had turned 90 years old before his first major U.S. exhibition opened, at the Museum of Modern Art, two years ago. Clearly there is more to be done in terms of showcasing Ferrari's influential career here, and now the commercial gallery Haunch of Venison has stepped in to show 30 pieces spanning Ferrari's production from 1962 to 2010. There are a few overlaps with the MoMA show, including the 1980 stainless steel sculpture "Opus 113," and more revelatory experiences are promised by early works such as the 1964 drawing "The Impregnating Tree," which tells a sort of feminist version of the biblical flood story, in which all men bite the dust and the world is populated by women alone. It's worthwhile to remember that Ferrari was subverting Christian imagery long before Wojnarowicz got in hot water with the Smithsonian; as recently as seven years ago an exhibition of Ferrari's saw pushback from the Catholic Church in his hometown of Buenos Aires. And though his biting critique has extended to American shores — curator Rob Storr included Ferrari's sculpture of a crucifix mounted to a U.S. bomber in the 2007 Venice Biennale — the reception of his gallery show in New York is likely to be less embattled than appreciative.

KATE DEIMLING

"Selected Shorts: Haiti Noir" at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, January 26, 7 p.m., symphonyspace.org

If you're reading this on Wednesday, there is still time to make it to tonight's spine-tingling edition of Symphony Space's beloved Selected Shorts series. "Haiti Noir," edited by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat and published by Brooklyn-based Akashic Books, came out this month, right around the first anniversary of the country's devastating earthquake. I love the way "Selected Shorts" takes the intimate experience of reading a story and turns it into a shared and memorable event, and this one is likely to be unique and spooky, with actors Anika Noni Rose and Stephen Lang reading tales that combine uncanny elements of Haitian folklore with classic crime fiction.

JACLYN LORASO

"The Woodmans" directed by C. Scott Willis at the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, through February 1, filmforum.org

While photographer Francesca Woodman only spent a short time making art (she committed suicide at the tender age of 22), her sometimes sinister, sometimes fanciful body of work has continued to fascinate photography buffs the world over. C. Scott Willis's documentary fashions not only a portrait of the photographer — through extensive footage that incorporates interviews and diary entries — but also of the family of working artists (patriarch George is a painter, mother Betty a ceramicist, brother Charlie a video artist) that Woodman left behind.

ARTINFO MONSTER

Kenny Scharf "Naturafutura" at Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Avenue, opening January 72, through February 26, paulkasmingallery.com

Rawr, rawr, grrowl, hoot, rawr, nom, nom, nom, burp.