David Zwirner, London, 30 January – 2 April
David Zwirner’s Mayfair townhouse is the setting for a solo show by Luc Tuymans, widely considered Belgium’s greatest living artist. Tuymans paints from found photographs and other images, but rather than attempting to mimic the pictorial precision of pixels or print, the results emphasise the expressive qualities of paint, the slippery nature of representation and the complexities of his chosen images’ subject matter. The exhibition includes a haunting portrait of Issei Sagawa, drawn from footage of the famous cannibal when he was young.

Victoria Miro, Mayfair 30 January – 28 March & Wharf Road 30 January – 14 March
Whet your associative appetite for the RA’s summer show on Joseph Cornell by visiting a show by a fellow New Yorker following in his footsteps: Sarah Sze. The exhibition is across Victoria Miro’s two sites. I visited the Mayfair gallery this week and wondered at the way that Sze, like Cornell, deftly combines ideas and images in assemblages of small objects.

Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 24 January – 28 March
Bernard Jacobson’s new gallery is a pleasure to visit. Walk across Piccadilly from the RA, turn into Duke Street St James’s and, opposite Fortnum & Mason’s side entrance, stands a welcoming glass front, behind which stairs beckon you to a downstairs space generous enough to display large-scale paintings. Jacobson has supported American artists since the late 1960s, and his inaugural show surveys Robert Motherwell, to mark the centenary of the influential abstractionist’s birth.

Cell Project Space, London, 30 January – 8 March
RA Schools alumna Natalie Dray is the subject of a show at the respected Bethnal Green project space Cell. Moving on from the ideas of 1960s Minimalism, when pared-down industrial forms were presented as self-sufficient art objects, Dray’s displays appliances such as wall-hung heaters as artworks – except these products have been reverse engineered by the artist in advance.

APT Kickstarter campaign, deadline 9 February
Mali Morris RA told me about an important Kickstarter campaign that the artist community APT is running for painter Robert Welch. Welch’s mark-making took a new direction following his 2011 stroke, once he regained some control of pencil and brush. The works that resulted, many of which were produced in hospital, were exhibited in 2013. Now APT are raising funds to publish an artist book about this period in Welch’s practice, with an introductory essay by Morris.

Sam Phillips (@SamP_London) is Editor of RA Magazine.