For the second showing of his “Soundsuits” at Jack Shainman Gallery, Nick Cave offered a profusion of opulent fabrics, porcelain birds and plastic flowers. A U-shaped platform in the main room displayed more than a dozen of Cave’s signature costumes, here featuring floral jacquard, neon sequins, flaps of knitwear and harlequin patchwork, all worn by mannequins looming over the viewer.

For over 30 years, Jenny Holzer’s art has plumbed the relationship between didactic text and other visual conduits for language. In the late ’70s, she wheat-pasted posters of Nietzsche-like Truisms across Lower Manhattan. The guerrilla-style work garnered a cult following and established her authoritative, forewarning voice. As time passed, she has proved to be the art world’s soothsayer. The best known truism, for example, reads, “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.”

In an exhibition of five untitled sculptures, one wall-mounted and the rest freestanding (all but one 2009), Charles Long took a detour from the Los Angeles River and its detritus, from castaway shopping carts and water-bird feces.

Florian Maier-Aichen brings a contemporary sensibility to bear on a range of historical references, from German Romantic painting to 19th-century photographs of the American West. The German-born photographer shoots images with a large-format camera then alters them digitally by combining negatives, adding computer-drawn elements or otherwise changing the originals.

Alfredo Jaar wrote the script on which The Sound of Silence is based in 1995, and then waited more than a decade before he figured out what to do with it. (Completed in 2006, the project varies slightly from one venue to the next; this was its first appearance in New York.) He says the delay was a matter of waiting for the right technology, but it is as readily explained in emotional terms.