Philip Pearlstein is a collector of oddities, in life and within his paintings. A typical studio setup juxtaposes emotionally vacant, lithe, naked models among assorted toys and curios – kitsch or decrepit to varying degrees.

The poses and arrangements of his mannerist compositions are studiedly weird, but the more tricksy his jumbled and skewed images become, the more disconcertingly prosaic his paint-handling seems in comparison. The same hand is used, in an even, measured way, to render volumetrically complex flesh and flat fabrics, solid forms and elusive shadows. His painterly attitude mirrors the disconnect between his models’ facial expressions and their contorted postures. The viewer, too, is left poised between tedium and fancy, alienation and intrigue.

The artist would have us believe, apparently, that his sole concerns are formal construction and perception itself. But his presentation of at once functional and fantastical objects – a Chinese kite, decoys, a butcher’s sign, iconic pop trademarks like the HMV dog, cartoon characters, a weathervane airplane, Americana, tribal artifacts, not to mention the nude as “plaything” – cannot but operate at some level of metaphor, if not allegory. At the very least, the images are object poems, even if they resist decoding.

Often as not the symbolism seems as literal as the perception, however. “Model on Bamboo Lounge With Artist Mannequin” (2005) is almost a manifesto piece for an artist concerned with teasing the boundaries between nature and artifice, what is alive and what is art.

The dramatis personae have interchangeable designations: The wooden figure could accurately be deemed a model, while the reclining woman could be termed, following the French term, an artist’s mannequin. Her pose, kimono akimbo to show brown suntanned flesh, one hand upon her thigh, the other pressed on her brow, is oddly stilted (“wooden”). Meanwhile, the light lends a teasingly animated quality to the actual wood figurine.

Mr. Pearlstein often singles out this black model for images that play on visual-verbal issues of color and tone. In an earlier series, she sprawled over a doll’s house model of the White House. In “Model With Dreadlocks on Blue Blow-Up Chair” (2003) in the current group, the buzzwords, whether set off consciously or not, are “color,” “skin,” “otherness.”

Two pictures from 2005 feature a model with her legs crossed over an African drum. In terms of visual metaphor, there seems to be a play on tautness, a sense of stretched skin and tightened muscle uniting instrument and sitter. The drum has stylized animals carved in relief – a verbal pun on the mannerism of the model’s pose, in which tension and relaxation play against each other.

Apart from the conflict between the literal and the metaphorical, the aesthetic response a Pearlstein elicits is complex. Are they “realist,” using a received language to achieve an immediacy comparable, for instance, to photography, or are they perceptualist – that is, really about looking afresh and putting down what is seen and experienced, however different from photography that turns out to be?

The awkwardness and distortion that arise from cheating or doing without single-point perspective suggest the latter. But in all the years he has been doing this, Mr. Pearlstein has generated his own set of tropes – radical foreshortening, shadow play, the contrast of fabrics that are already flattened against volumetric forms that he himself flattens. These are as much a language as is realism. His naivete is a form of sophistication, and vice versa.

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Time is an implicit element in Mr. Pearlstein’s paintings. Although the surfaces give off conflicting reports – they are chock full of facts but dutifully delivered – the sense of detail and attention, not to mention the cheesed-off expression of the models, suggest the long haul.

Danica Phelps leaves no ambiguity about time in her work: It is the work. Taking the diaristic to a literalist extreme, her show at Zach Feuer presents erotic doodles, flow diagrams, and expenditure charts that list her daily activities on an hourly and cent-by-cent basis. Despite coming from a very different culture (feminism, conceptualism, and fluxus), Ms. Phelps shares much with Mr. Pearlstein: nutty observation, repeating patterns, overlapping languages, and oddly compelling tedium.

Her hand – whether offering drawing or writing, graphic-designerish rendering or vaguely expressive, languorous figuration – is at once neat and dashed off, fastidious and fiddly. She constructs handmade, Filofaxlike charts filled in, retrospectively, with the activities that have accounted for her day. “STUDIO” in block letters will account for long stretches (but not as long, I suspect, as Mr. Pearlstein or his sitters). Other repeated activities are walking the dog, paying bills, chatting with Debi, eating with Debi, and making love with the lucky Debi.

The lovemaking brings out the draftswoman in Ms. Phelps, who produces overlapping, outlined wire figures in minimally defined interior spaces. Expenditure alone, however, brings out the colorist. Ms. Phelps continues from earlier shows an elaborate notational system of income and expenditure in bar codes of reds, yellows, and greens.

Pearlstein until October 22 (541 W. 25th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-242-2772). Prices: $45,000-$150,000.

Phelps until October 1 (530 W. 24th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-989-7700). Prices: $400-$3,000.