With the bulk of September’s most hyped shows now safely opened to the public, it's time to begin sorting through the field and making sense of it all. Algus Greenspons mini-retrospective of the thoroughly indefinable painter Gene Beery is one show that merits a look, a real joy when viewed with milk chocolate M&Ms plucked from the stacked-tire sculptures in Rob Pruitts nearby show. So, too, is the adventurous and twisted group show, "Mine," at Invisible-Exports, where Jana Leo performed last Saturday — sucking on a popsicle, attempting (unsuccessfully) to draw blood from her arm with a needle, and then laying under a sheet of glass (shades of Chris Burden) with a naked man standing above her. Let's take a peek at this week's offerings.

WEDNESDAY

"FAQ Serbia," at Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, through January 11, opening Wednesday, September 22, 6–8 p.m., acfny.org

"With Serbia’s economy in turnaround, Belgrade’s cool factor is on the rise," the New York Times reported last year. It’s no surprise, then, that its art scene is similarly ascendant. Belgrade’s MOCA has provided most of the work for this show exploring the now-concluded war in Yugoslavia, in which Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins and video master Anri Sala appear alongside less-familiar names like Katarina Zdjelar and Raša Todosijeviæ. After hometown hero Marina Abramovićs triumphant MoMA appearance, the Belgrade artists among the bunch have major expectations to meet at the ACF, which is riding a wave of smart, unusual shows.

"Another Green World," at Carriage Trade, 62 Walker Street, through November 28, opening Wednesday, September 22, 6–8 p.m., carriagetrade.org

Even in an art world with room for dozens of trends and movements, depicting landscapes is one age-old pursuit that has definitively fallen out of favor, as a colleague pointed out to me recently. Once a cornerstone of American art, the natural world appears today most often in car ads and signs at Whole Foods. But portraying the "sublime beauty of the land" has long been "directly connected to its ultimate exploitation and control," this show argues, collecting works by the German legend Gerhard Richter, enchantress Vija Celmins, and a collaborative piece by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, among others.

"Seriality: Allan McCollum and Sol LeWitt, " at Armand Bartos Fine Art, 25 East 73rd Street, through October 22, opening Wednesday, September 22, 6–8 p.m., armandbartos.com

Sol LeWitt’s works have become such museums staples that it is easy to forget the cold mathematics and obsessive repetition embedded within them, the "kind of mad obstinacy" they seem to demonstrate, to quote art historian Rosalind Krauss. Here’s another chance to take a look, in the form of "Wall Drawing 253," built with the instruction "grid and arcs from one corner and midpoints of two adjacent sides, surrounding the corner." LeWitt is joined by Allan McCollum, who mines culture — the design of a traditional Chinese ginger jar, for example — for his own repetitious, often sumptuously colored, art.

THURSDAY

Mark Barrow, at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 545 West 20th Street, opening Thursday, September 23, through October 30, 6–8 p.m., elizabethdeegallery.com

While the tone of this show’s press release is ominous (Barrow works in "postmodernism’s vacuous wake," we are told), the paintings in it are anything but. Barrow’s wife, Sarah Parke, makes the hand-loomed linen on which he builds faint and strangely soothing abstractions. Quiet, humble takes on Tomma Abts, they trust viewers to puzzle out their own meanings, and pleasure. A 2006 Yale grad who showed at White Columns in 2008, Barrow's jumping through all the right hoops for a very particular art-world career path. Thankfully, he seems to have the work to thrive in that high-wire plane.

Deborah Kass, "More Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times," at Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Avenue, through October 30, opening Thursday, September 23, 6–8 p.m., paulkasmingallery.com

Now that Levine, Sturtevant, and Pettibone have secured places in art history, do we need another appropriation artist? We do if that artist is Deborah Kass, who brings an unbridled joy to the act of copying, reworking Ed Ruschas blue and gold "OOF" painting (1962/63) as "OY" and rendering a prickly quotation from Louise Bourgeois in Bruce Naumans trademark spiraling neon. It should be an especially interesting opening if lapsed Minimalist Frank Stella (who also shows at Kasmin) attends: Kass has overlaid his early multicolored concentric-square canvases with a message: "DADDY WOULD LOVE TO DANCE." Its title? "Frank’s Dilemma."