The heat is on, but New York galleries just won’t stop. The biggest action this week is downtown: a three-hour reception on Thursday night to mark the official opening of the ingenious nine-gallery “Lush Life” festival, which may double as a triumphant celebration of the Lower East Side’s complete gentrification. With shows devoted to spray paint and sculptural weaponry, and one exhibition filled with ladies, it is as fine a time as any to be out in the streets of New York, wandering among galleries in search of art and air-conditioning.

THURSDAY

Spray!” at D’Amelio Terras, 525 West 22nd Street, through August 13, opening Thursday, July 8, 6–8 p.m., damelioterras.com

This show argues that the aerosol paint can has contributed to artists far-removed from the graffiti world. David Smith outlined objects with the stuff, creating works — are they paintings? — that resemble Man Rays photograms. Sterling Ruby, renowned for his spray-paint-bedecked ceramics, Color Field legend Jules Olitski, the irrepressible and irresistible Yayoi Kusama, and Katharina Grosse, whose site-specific aerosol work hews perhaps closest to graffiti, are also among the diverse group on board.

Summer at Flag,” at the FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, through September 10, opening Thursday, July 8, 6–8 p.m., flagartfoundation.org

After hosting a Shaq-curated blockbuster, the consistently pleasing FLAG Foundation is presenting a series of small shows in its luxurious two-floor space for the summer. Robert Lazzarini is showing his perceptually skewed sculptures of weaponry (originally Deitch Projects-bound before that dealer left the city), while the hardworking, multitasking Jennifer Dalton shows 432 photographs of artists sliced from the pages of the New Yorker between 1999 and 2001. FLAG was founded by money manager Glenn R. Fuhrman, head of entrepreneur Michael Dells private investment firm, MSD Capital, which recently purchased the Magnum Photo Archive. A pleasant surprise: a handful of photos from that collection, including some showing Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits, will also be on display.

Lush Life,” various galleries on the Lower East Side, through various dates, opening Thursday, July 8, 6–9 p.m. lushlifeles.com

Curators Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Franklin Evans have filled nine of the Lower East Side’s leading galleries with shows based on chapters in Richard Prices Lush Life crime novel, which is set in the neighborhood early in the last decade, when a local art scene existed only in the memory of those that could recall 1980s New York. (ARTINFO's Andrew M. Goldstein recently interviewed Price about the project.) The sterling cast of artists, whose work was picked to match events and scenes in the thriller, includes impressive names like Rashid Johnson, Gina Magid, Tim Davis, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Ishmael Randall Weeks, but it almost seems silly to look for highlights in a project this ambitious and biennale-sized.

FRIDAY

You Were There,” at Rachel Uffner Gallery, 47 Orchard Street, through August 13, opening Friday, July 9, 6–8 p.m., racheluffnergallery.com

This show offers up two works each from six different artists: one work is dated 2005, the other 2010. This conceit promises a synopsis of artists’ careers — like those of the bafflingly pleasurable painter Josh Smith and foam formalist Justin Adian — and the still-young Lower East Side galleries with which many of these artists were first associated. Joe Bradleys monochrome-painting-as-tangrams pieces have held up nicely for five years. Will they still excite in a 2015 edition of this show? I’m willing to bet that Sara Greenberger Raffertys watery, bleeding photographs will.

Daniel Hesidence Curates,” at Tracy Williams, Ltd., through August 6, opening Friday, July 9, 6–8 p.m., tracywilliamsltd.com

“I met a girl last week that wanted me to punch her in the throat,” a “statement of purpose” reads on this show’s press release. Fair enough. Artist Daniel Hesidence has selected work by eight artists (all women) that ranges from the beautifully gritty art of Huma Bhabha (who figures prominently in MoMAs recent reinstallation of its contemporary art galleries) to the surreal, bodily-infused abstraction of Carrie Moyer. Judy Ledgerwood paints abstract works imbued with psychological turmoil, while Kinke Kooi presents wildly detailed, topsy-turvy grotesquery: Mike Kelley by way of M.C. Escher.