It's not particularly common that Conceptual Art is thought-provoking, aesthetically pleasing and utterly desirable. Much less often does it engage a viewer with a cheeky sense of humour. The fact that the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann covers all of these points makes him a great asset to contemporary visual art. Serpentine Gallery have a new show of work by the German artist, and it is the perfect opener to what will be a series of summer blockbusters in the park.

Like many of his contemporaries (names including Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter), Feldmann came to international prominence in the 1970s; his pre-occupation is in the collection, categorisation, organisation and presentation of common, everyday objects. Systematic and thorough re-organisation of photographs of (generally assumed to be) the banal detritus of daily visual culture displayed across booklets, magazines, books, postcards and installation developed Feldmann's continued interest in slowing time down; using the visual tools of the daily grind, chronicled in the most expansive manner.

For this show at Serpentine Gallery, Feldmann presents works from across his entire career, as well as two new works never shown in the UK. The first extends Feldmann's curiosity in the significance of the ordinary: The artist bought a number of ladies' handbags, paying upto €400 upon approaching them on the street. In the gallery he presents their contents in vitrines and on plinths, in traditional museological display. The second, the series Seascapes, collection fifteen oils painted in the classical sense, displayed in traditional frames.

Feldmann has become one of the most significant contemporary artists working today, with exhibitions including documenta 5, documenta 6 and the 2003 and 2009 Venice Biennali. In 2010 he was the winner of the Hugo Boss Prize and for his winning exhibition at the Guggenheim, New York, he cashed his $100,000 dollar prize in single-dollar bills and pinned every dollar on the walls. An artist who truly understand Conceptualism, this is dismantling every structure you think you know about art, one white cube at a time.

Hans-Peter Feldmann is at Serpentine Gallery until 05 June.

It's not often your Culture section advises you to put on your shoes and get down to something as a matter of urgency but, dear Reader, put on your shoes and get down to Stephen Friedman Gallery with a matter of urgency. Closing on Saturday is their latest exhibition, a series of large-scale canvasses by the Chinese artist Li Tianbing.

Li is regarded as one of the leading Chinese painters of his generation. Stephen Friedman Gallery present eight of them (and if they haven't all sold already my jaw will break as it hits the ground). The paintings are abstracted portraits in which Li reminisces on his childhood and the effect of China's one-child rule. The portraits are captured oneiric moments, and the through the litany of white noise and cultural detritus there is something captivating behind in the eyes of the children, Li's subjects. I'm not quite sure if it's magic or something even less definable. I'd hate to think it might be anything else.

But that possibility remains, dear Reader. Trained in Paris, Li's technique is deft, classical and rooted in a modernist style that is nearly impossible to find executed at such a level of proficiency. Li's childhood in China went largely unrecorded; cameras were valuable items and were beyond common reach of his family. If these paintings represent his memories, even in any small measure, they're beautiful and as haunting and all the better for it.

Li Tianbing is at Stephen Friedman Gallery until this Saturday, 21 April.

It might take a small leap of faith, dear reader, but there was a time when Irvine Welsh was the great white hope of British literature. These were the sunny days of Cool Britannia, the bright dawn of New Labour and Welsh was the satirising Scot biting worse than his (not inconsiderable) bark. Blame Danny Boyle, Ewan McGregor and the perfect storm that was the film adaptation of Trainspotting. Another adaptation was made for the screen from a book of Welsh's short stories in its aftermath, the less-than-popular The Acid House. If you don't know who Irvine Welsh is now, I wouldn't be surprised.

This Friday sees the release of the third adaptation from an Irvine Welsh story, this time his short The Undefeated, from the best-selling anthology of novellas Ecstasy, comes Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. First-time director Rob Heydon knows which way his bread is buttered. The story sees a romance bloom between dealer Lloyd and housewife Heather. The x of the title representing that which is at once illicit, seductive and alluring. Is the chemistry that Lloyd and Heather share a love for each other, or are they simply drugged into believing it?

There are many, many things wrong (both practically and morally) with making and marketing a movie anchored by drugs; it's a pretty crass way of doing things, and thankfully it hasn't been seen much since the late 90s/early 2000s (and, to be fair, a lot of its culprits, were cut-price imitators of Trainspotting) but Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy brings us a reminder of some of the writer's best work. There are revelatory moments that are expressed with a clarity that is uncommon for a film of its kind, it puts up a good fight for its own existence, and it might actually just surprise you.

Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy is on general release from Friday, 20 April.