ANDREW M. GOLDSTEIN

Francesco Vezzoli "Sacrilegio" at Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, opening February 5, 6-8p.m., through March 12, gagosian.com

When it comes to the Baroque, the over-the-top theatricality and glitz of Bernini seems positively demure next to Francesco Vezzoli's impossibly campy investigations of celebrity, often in the key of soapy melodrama. (Witness his 2007 video "Francesco Vezzoli: A True Hollywood Story!" about the artist's fictional rise and scandalous fall, and his maudlin duet with Lady Gaga at Los Angeles MOCA's 2009 gala.) For his latest show, Vezzoli has enlisted architect Annabelle Selldorf to refashion Gagosian's 21st Street gallery into a Renaissance chapel, the better to showcase his canvases of classic supermodels — Stephanie Seymour, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, et al. — inserted into the classic Madonna-and-child scenes of the likes of Bellini and Botticelli. If Saint Theresa felt funny before, just wait till she sees this show.

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Martin Kersels "Charms, Stacks & Flotsam" at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th Street, opening February 4, 6-8 p.m., through March 12, miandn.com

Following in the Chiron-like hoofsteps of John Baldessari, Martin Kersels is the latest revered CalArts professor to have a show in New York, his first in nine years and his debut with Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Less boisterous fare than his contribution to the Whitney Biennial last year — a sculptural band stage for rowdy performances — it consists of "charms" (sculptures made from assemblages of mascot costumes and other goofy detritus), "stacks" (piles of books), and "flotsam" (drawings of bones and other objects floating in a colorful ether). If you have any questions, just raise your hand.

Maria Petschnig "Erolastika" at On Stellar Rays, 133 Orchard Street, opening February 5, 6-8 p.m., through March 13, onstellarrays.com

There's a current vogue for twisted erotic photography — c.f. artists like Laurel Nakadate and Leigh Ledare — but artist Maria Petschnig has taken a surreal, playful approach that has made her work seem intriguingly odd in a less wrenching way. She once made a self-portrait that fashioned her seminude body into the face of John Goodman, for instance. Now, she's going a slightly darker route, presenting a show of two videos and several collaborative images inspired by a mysterious Russian photographer named Viktor, whose high-production-value pictures of faceless women Petschnig had stumbled upon in New York flea markets. In the gallery's basement there will be a bedroom setting — suggesting that borders of intimacy will be crossed — and there will be a performance at 7 p.m. on the opening night.

BEN DAVIS

Tracey Moffatt artist's talk at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, 529 West 20th Street, 10W, February 5 at 3 p.m., trfineart.com

The Australian photo artist talks about her current show "Still and Moving," with its mixture of eerie plantation imagery — staged colonial fever dreams — and pulpy faux Hollywood film stills that highlight more contemporary fantasies. Definitely worth checking out.

Butt Johnson, "The Name of the Rose" at CRG Gallery, 548 West 22nd Street, through February 19, crggallery.com

You would maybe not look to someone who calls himself "Butt Johnson" for an example of the sublime. But the smart, delightfully intricate ballpoint pen drawings by the pseudonymously named artist, in his first show at Chelsea's CRG, are some of the coolest works around right now.

EMMA ALLEN

Artbattles.com re-launch with artists Pesu and Ben Angotti at the Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street, February 5, doors open at 9 p.m., artbattles.com

It’s been a while since the first season of Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Top Artist" drew to a close, which has left me for far too many months in a state of bloodthirsty art-conflict-lust. This might, were it not for ArtBattles, have led me to spread vicious rumors and throw punches at gallery openings in the hopes that I might instigate some art-world head-bashing. But now I can just trot over to Ace Hotel to watch two artists fling their paint — not at each other, sadly, but at canvases — in an attempt to prove their superior talents at creating "art" under duress and time constraints. Also, NHK Japanese TV will be filming the whole thing (and I've always wanted to be on Japanese TV) while DJ MELO-X spins some battle cries.

Saturday Sessions: Hosted by Anne Apparu featuring performances by Next Nikki and Pete Drungle, at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, February 5, 4-6 p.m., ps1.org

All anyone should really need to know about this event in order to be as desperate as I am to attend is that Apparu is serving up Sweat Tea and Inner War Cookies (which I'm assuming are not so-named because they cause indigestion). Apparu, who certainly knows the way to my heart (cookies), co-founded Chop Shop with Agathe Snow and Marianne Vitale and organized the Sunday Restaurant at the Beatrice Inn.

Hope Gangloff at Susan Inglett Gallery, 522 West 24th Street, opening February 3, 6-8 p.m., through March 12, inglettgallery.com

I would maybe think these paintings were twee if I didn't love them so much. I admit I live in Brooklyn and have tried to acquire the first edition of "Daddy Long Legs" that Gangloff illustrated in one of the works in this show, both of which facts make me feel like, really cool. No, these paintings, with their subdued pastel depictions of women in knee-high socks near space heaters, discarded seltzer bottles, and over-stuffed bookshelves make my heart swell with a feeling of home.

SARAH DOUGLAS

Ellen Gallagher at Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, through February 26, gagosian.com 

A couple weeks ago, a collector with impeccable taste emailed and said I should go see Ellen Gallagher's show at Gagosian. Well, I was feeling introspective and was disinclined to see anything at all. I just wanted to stay home and read Michael Wolff's Rupert Murdoch biography. Then I came down with a terrible ear infection and was unable to leave the house even if I'd wanted to. Today, I left the house, despite the fact that everything I listen to is still filtered through a scrim of sound — rather like being inside a large conch shell, or duct taping to your head one of those white noise machines indigenous to therapists' waiting rooms. Strangely this underwaterish state turned out to be an ideal one in which to view these new pieces of Gallagher's, since with most auditory stimuli muted I found myself in a meditative state amenable not only to scrutinizing the surfaces of these extraordinary and meticulously constructed pieces, but to zooming in on the multitude of collaged elements that compose them. Look very closely and you will catch allusive snippets of text from articles and advertisements in newspapers and magazines: Jamaica; Jim Beam; patterns; confidence; armour; supreme life; for big men; what each has done for the other. Unfortunately, just when I'd immersed myself fully in Gallagher's rich metonymic stew, my cell phone vibrated. I, like Martin Peretz, always answer my cell phone, so I stepped outside, my viewing experience interrupted by the exigencies of journalism. What I mean to say is: so few things reward long looking these days. I haven't quite plumbed the depths of these marvelous pieces, so I think I'll go back this weekend. To paraphrase Herodotus via the U.S. Postal Service, neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night nor chronic otitis media will stay me from this particular errand. You should go, too.

KATE DEIMLING

"Stargazers: Elizabeth Catlett in Conversation with 21 Contemporary Artists," at the Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse, the Bronx, through May 29, open house February 6, 2-6 p.m., bronxmuseum.org

According to the organizers, this is the first show to position the work of pioneering African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett in dialogue with contemporary art. The exhibition will include 40 pieces that Catlett made from the 1960s onward (since she was born in 1915, her early work is even earlier). Catlett's sculptures and prints are exhibited alongside 21 contemporary works from the museum's collection by artists including Kalup Linzy, Wangechi Mutu, Rob Pruitt, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, which at the open house will be paired with music selected by Xaviera Simmons.

"An Evening with New Chamber Ballet," City Center Studios, 130 West 56th Street, 4th Floor, February 4 and 5 at 8 p.m., newchamberballet.com

New Chamber Ballet is always a great venue for accomplished, intimate ballet with live musical accompaniment. This weekend brings three world premieres by Constantine Baecher, Miro Magloire, and Emery LeCrone, featuring music by Debussy, Saint-Saëns, and Stockhausen. Last season's performance of "Viduity," choreographed by Baecher, was a moving and thrilling exploration of loss and grief, so I'm excited to discover how he will depict emotion in his "Sketches of a Woman Remembering," which asks the question: What if the nymph who resisted the faun's amorous advances in Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun" regretted her decision later in life?

SCOTT INDRISEK

"Journeys: How traveling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment" edited by Giovanna Borasi, published by Actar and Canadian Centre for Architecture, actar.es

Don't be dismayed if your previous experience with "architecture books" involves yawning over generically photographed real estate porn; this is a volume about architecture only in the very broadest of terms. It accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view through March 13 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, a theory- and research-driven institution that has previously mounted shows about outer space and renegade urban interventions (parkour, say, or car-shaped tents that allow one to sleep, guerrilla-style, on the street.) Whether or not you have a chance to venture up north, this handsomely designed book covers all the stories involved — and it’s a wonderfully mixed bunch, from house-moving in Newfoundland, to urban planning snafus on the outskirts of Amsterdam, multiethnic conclaves in Italy, regulations governing the shape of cucumbers, and the ramshackle architecture created by African-Americans who emigrated to Liberia. Each theme, loosely related to the concept of migration or 'journey,' is elaborated in fictional form by a different author. As a whole, the exhibition and book (curated and edited by Giovanna Borasi) forms a sprawling, eccentric map of a different sort of globalization. It sure beats glossy photographs of houses you’ll never live in.

DANIEL KUNITZ

Steve Clark "The Girl Is Blue + Refuses to Sing" at the West Broadway Gallery Space, 362 West Broadway, opening February 4, 7-10 p.m., through February 7, steveclark.com

Poet, novelist, as well as writer-director of the film "The Last International Playboy," Steve Clark is also an exceptionally talented painter. He's New York's version of a Renaissance man. His exhibition of new paintings, "The Girl Is Blue + Refuses to Sing" opens Friday.

ARTINFO MONSTER

"Pornucopia" at Allegra LaViola Gallery, 179 East Broadway, opening Febrary 4, 6-9 p.m., through March 11, allegralaviola.com

Hubba hubba rawr chomp.