Long home to a mélange of cultural attractions — burlesque clubs, anarchist squats, and Jewish delis — New York's Lower East Side is currently mesmerizing the art world. The neighborhood, with its friendly, DIY ethos, has recently birthed a host of new galleries, while more established galleries have also caught the LES bug and are setting up satellite spaces there. Venues range from smallish to smaller, but a quirky community vibe makes up for the modest square footage.

Part of the area's old guard, CANADA has lately expanded its Chrystie Street location to Chelsea-gallery proportions. The wistful, textured vignettes of painter Michael Williams, currently on display, contrast nicely with Kanishka Raja's unpopulated yet heavily patterned paintings on view just up the street. Raja's show at Envoy, another LES mainstay, continues uptown at Jack Tilton Gallery. Further north on Chrystie, Lehmann Maupin is busily converting the former East Side Glass Company headquarters into a second exhibition space, which will open late this year with work from Do-Ho Suh, a Korean artist renowned for his large-scale sculptures.

Over on Eldridge Street, one-year-old SUNDAY L.E.S. comprises a storefront and small project room in back, where visitors can glimpse a Mary Tyler Moore-themed installation by Sara Greenberger Rafferty. Further east, the co-op exhibition/performance space Orchard, named for its address, hosts Image Coming Soon, a month-long multimedia extravaganza headed by artist Karin Schneider. A few doors down, the elegant Miguel Abreu Gallery will soon boast a solo show by abstract photographer Eileen Quinlan.

Rivington and Stanton Streets are well represented by Eleven Rivington and Smith-Stewart, respectively. The former is affiliated with Midtown's Greenberg Van Doren Gallery and features a three-person show with tie-dyed canvases from Michael Phelan offset by Tamar Halpern's manipulated C-prints and Florian Morlat's fabric mobiles. The latter, opened by accomplished curator Amy Smith-Stewart, recently debuted Turkish-born Elif Uras' The Occidentalist — a series of paintings coupled with color-coordinated Iznik vases. The oddball of the LES pack is East Broadway's RENTAL, which selects other galleries to "rent" its space. Current tenant Los Angeles-based Sister presents video from Michele O'Marah and Black Panther-inspired paintings by Henry Taylor.

Many gems lie slightly outside the neighborhood confines, such as Little Cakes on 6th Street, which hosts "gentle arts" ranging from crafty to folkloric to psychedelic. The nearby Fuse Gallery runs the gamut and currently features Cheryl Dunn's high-octane photographic series No One's Not Happy When They're Dancing. In Chinatown, the small gallery James Fuentes holds court, currently exhibiting large celebrity portraits by David Perry, who made his paintings while living and working in Julian Schnabel's studio.

The spirit of the LES may be best exemplified by Cuchifritos, a tiny exhibition space sandwiched in the grocery-buying bustle of the Essex Street Market. Or does the studiedly rustic Salon 94 Freemans, designed by Rafael Viñoly, better capture the current moment? Perhaps, given the neighborhood's esprit des corps, both are equal epitomes of the downtown scene.

-SK