A striking feature of the roster of shows on offer this season in New York’s commercial galleries and nonprofit spaces is the strength of sculpture and sculptural installation. First up is a two-person show of sculptural installation at James Cohan Gallery (until October 4), featuring Xu Zhen and Folkert de Jong, whose aesthetic is similarly robust and visceral. Diana Al-Hadid, who is having her debut solo show at Perry Rubenstein (until October 11), has made a Tower of Babel-like structure titled “The Reverse Collider,” indicating her fascination with astro- and nuclear physics.

Much of the sculpture on show and coming up reflects the enduring influence of Louise Bourgeois, the matron saint of a kind of feminist personalism in found and fabricated sculptural objects. Her career retrospective continues at the Guggenheim through September 28. Ms. Bourgeois herself has a show of recent work at Cheim & Read (until November 1). Two younger women pioneers of new forms of sculptural expression have shows, too: Mia Westerlund Roosen at Betty Cuningham (until November 22), and Judy Pfaff at Ameringer & Yohe (opening November 13). Ms. Bourgeois’s playful patheticism and fabric sensibility register in the work of Cosima von Bonin at Friedrich Petzel Gallery (until October 4) and Rey Akdogan at Venetia Kapernekas Gallery (until October 17).

Men make sculpture, too, as it happens. William Tucker has new work opening October 2 at McKee, and fellow Brit Keith Tyson, the installation artist whose penchant for compulsive organization of trashy materials recalls the late American Jason Rhoades, is on view at PaceWildenstein through October 4.

And men can also take part in a painterly and draftsmanly form that some writers have associated with a post-feminist female identity: that of personal patheticism. This style, which entails a knowingly cramped, adolescent, spindly realism, is noticeable in the work of Joseph Smolinski at Mixed Greens (until October 4), Jeremy Lawson at 33 Bond (until October 10), Keith Mayerson at Derek Eller Gallery (opening October 17), and Carson Ellis at Werkstatte, on the Lower East Side (opening December 4).

Members of both sexes, meanwhile, continue to be attracted to modes of gutsy, tough, painterly figuration. Cecily Brown, whose new work invariably attracts close attention from the press and the art world alike, opens September 20 at Gagosian’s West 24th Street gallery, while Judy Glantzman continues at Betty Cuningham through October 4. Rita Ackermann at Andrea Rosen (until October 18), Bendix Harms at Anton Kern (until October 4), and Elizabeth Neel at Deitch Projects (opens November 6) all fly the flag for expressionism, as do Irish “truckscape” painter Nick Miller at the New York Studio School (until October 25) and the impasto-in-extremis Israeli figure painter David Stern, whose American period is the subject of a retrospective at Yeshiva University Museum (September 21 to February 8).

Mario Naves, veteran critic for the New York Observer, is an active painter and collage artist in his own right, and is showing “Postcards from Florida” at Elizabeth Harris (until October 4). A collage aesthetic also informs the work of Sydney Licht at Kathryn Markel (also until October 4), while another writer drawn to collage, Janet Malcolm, has new work at Lori Bookstein (until October 11). Meanwhile, continuing the theme, John Ashbery is showing his collages at Tibor de Nagy (until October 4) alongside the painter who has graced the covers of all his new books for many years now, Trevor Winkfield.

Acquavella has a historic treat for us next month with “Pablo Picasso: Marie-Therese,” which looks at his obsessive focus on his young blond mistress of the 1930s. Other galleries with historic fare on offer focus on postwar American Modernists: Dealer and painter Betty Parsons at Spanierman Modern (until October 11); painter Paul Feeley and sculptor Tony Smith at Matthew Marks (until October 25); sculptors Ronald Bladen at Jacobson Howard (opening October 12) and Irving Kriesberg at Lori Bookstein (opening October 16); a retrospective of Alice Trumbull Mason at Washburn Gallery (opening November 6), and Louisa Matthiasdottir at Tibor de Nagy (opening October 11), in their first show of this important painter since taking over responsibility of her estate from the defunct Salander-O’Reilly.

Another man overboard from that sunken ship, Paul Resika, is the subject of a show of paintings from the 1980s at James Graham & Sons (until September 26), while his close associate from the Hofmann School, Robert De Niro Sr., is at Ameringer & Yohe until October 11.

With T-shirts worn around town declaring that “Obama is the New Black,” one looks to contemporary art for more penetrating investigations of race and identity. Rashawn Griffin, who is showing at Smith-Stewart, has been described, like the presidential candidate, as “post-black,” while William Pope.L, opening tomorrow at Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s uptown premises, and Renee Cox at Von Lintel (opening October 16), both make work that suggest that crises of race are far from done with. Perhaps it is inevitable, as election season heats up, that more shows will reflect a political mood. Two realist painters who investigate issues of war and representation are Eyal Danieli at Elizabeth Harris (opening October 10) and Susanna Coffey at the New York Studio School (opening November 6).

A sense of apocalyptic foreboding also registers in the enigmatic images of melting buildings in Gary Simmons’s show, “Night of the Fires,” which continues at Metro Pictures until October 4. A similarly ominous sense of the fantastic comes across in the work of Corinne Wasmuht at Friedrich Petzel (also until October 4), Thomas Woodruff at PPOW (opening October 9), Damian Loeb at Acquavella (until October 7) and, on past evidence, Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky (opening November 13).