Lauren Seiden at Denny Gallery, through June 8

Crumpled, graphite-laden masses of paper assume the appearance of marble or stone in Seiden’s debut solo show in New York. They’re simultaneously delicate and imposing, practically begging the viewer to poke them, simply to see if they’ll yield or resist. (But yeah, don’t do that. Really.) As abstract objects — part drawing, part sculpture — they’re both superficially beautiful and conceptually impressive.

Michael Berryhill at Kansas, through June 14

Brad Phillips, writing in the May issue of Modern Painters, bashed the tendency of contemporary artists to rehash modernist tropes (Matisse recyclings being the primary sin). I doubt Phillips would find all that much to celebrate in Berryhill’s canvases, which have a palette and compositional sense sympathetic to John McAllister, another Phillips target, whose paintings are currently on view at James Fuentes LLC. But we can always agree to disagree, and I think Berryhill’s exhibition is a stunner, from the vitrine of stacked-and-piled drawings and studies at the entrance through the larger oil-on-linen paintings: eccentric still life scenarios, and jumbled figurative scenes, in which you sometimes can’t tell if you’re looking at a body or a building.

Lee Bul at Lehmann Maupin(Chrystie Street), through June 21

This South Korean artist’s exhibition is worth a trip if only to gauge your own opinion regarding interactivity and spectacle in contemporary practice. There are metal-and-mixed-media sculptures — a sprawling tree form on the floor, an abstract mass on the wall, another piece hanging like a chandelier from the ceiling — but the centerpiece is “Via Negative,” 2012, which fills the downstairs gallery at the Chrystie Street location. The floor is covered in mirrored tile, requiring visitors to put protective booties over their shoes before entering a structure that the artist has built: A funhouse-style hut of mirrors and lights that forces you into its illuminated heart, and then makes it more than a little difficult to find your way back out again. What do you do in such a situation? Well, you take a few obnoxiously experimental Instagram selfies, of course. And commenting on one of my own obnoxious selfies, a Scandinavian gallerist I know chimed in: “At first it was cheesy but none the less intriguing, and very beautiful once inside. And impressive that someone would build such an amazing maze around a Yayoi Kusama or Ivan Navarro work. The Kusama [Infinity Mirrored] rooms don’t need it, but Navarro should be thankful that someone has taken him to the next level.”

Kent Monkman at Sargent’s Daughters, through June 8

A powerhouse of a show packed with technical virtuosity, wry references, and irreverent humor, “Urban Res” features several large-scale paintings that populate Winnipeg streets with buffalo stampedes and First Nation people posing as both gangbangers and protectors, with plenty of art historical cameos (Picasso bodies languishing on the street; blurry Francis Bacon forms lurking in doorways). Spend some time here, taking in the tiny details — down to the stew of tattoos on the characters’ bodies — and then head to the history museum-inspired diorama installation in the back, in which a figure with the artist’s own face (an alter ego dubbed Miss Chief Eagle Testickle) rides an Indian motorcycle wearing a bra constructed from two Dreamcatchers.

Peter Dreher at Koenig and Clinton, through May 24

Occasionally, patience is rewarded in Chelsea. It’s easy to walk into this gallery and walk right out again, seeing little more than a serial arrangement of same-scaled paintings all of an identical, fairly insignificant subject. And technically, that’s what “Day By Day, Good Day” is: dozens and dozens of paintings of a water glass, all from a grouping of over 5,000 such paintings made between the mid-’70s and the present day. But linger a bit, moving from one glass to the next, and something strange happens: What was mundane becomes oddly intriguing. (I’m reminded of the famous John Cage quote about music and performance: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”) Progressing slowly through “Day By Day, Good Day” made me question the nature of repetition, obsession, manic labor, and the very utility-or-pointlessness of art in general — not bad for a glass of water. If you don’t have a similar moment of minor transcendence, you’ll at least appreciate Dreher’s tenacity.

ALSO WORTH SEEING:Ragnar Kjartansson’s all-in-the-family endurance performance, and Camille Henrot’s mix of Internet aesthetics and flower arrangements, at the New Museumthrough June 29; Harmony Korine’s don’t-scoff-they’re-actually-worth-your-time-we-promise paintings at Gagosian’s newish Park & 75 outpost; forceful sculptural pieces, composed of traditional rugs and industrial rubbers, by Dagestani artist Aladdin Garunov, the debut show at the impressively spacious Gallery Shchukin (on view through June 30); and the madcap, Peter Saul-curated exhibition “If You’re Accidentally Not Included, Don’t Worry About It” — featuring sex-crazed cats by Irena Jurek, plus oddities from Karl Wirsum, Gina Beavers, and others — at Zürcher Studio through June 1.