Keith Mayerson and James Rielly appropriate photographic and filmic source material, transforming it through careful editing, alteration of scale and proportion, and inventive use of color. Whereas Mr. Rielly tends to appropriate photographic imagery of anonymous people from journalistic sources — favoring images of faces and groups of people often dressed in costume — Mr. Mayerson is interested in iconic images of famous people. And many elements found in their work are also pure imagination.

In Mr. Rielly’s current exhibition at Galeria Ramis Barquet, there is one watercolor that exemplifies the kind of irony he favors. The painting is titled “We Sustained Heavy Losses” (2006) and it is an image of a weird boy/man wearing a pale red shirt, black vest, lopsided sheriff’s badge, ill-fitting black cowboy hat, and a prank arrow piercing his temples à la Steve Martin. The disjointedness of the serious title and the seemingly light-hearted imagery causes a rift between the viewer and the work, and the humor becomes something sordid. Are we supposed to laugh at this clownish figure or pity him? What kind of losses are we talking about?

Mr. Rielly has developed a very light touch and minimal technique using watercolors through the years. There are no superfluous marks or tones. He places his figures and faces within nondescript environments, often leaving the paper in the background untouched. Sometimes he suggests water or grass, but there is no obvious context. This lends the work a symbolic and ambiguous quality. In the painting “Give me, more more more” (2006), we see the tilted head of a young male or female with three cigarettes hanging out of his or her mouth. This could be a symbol of gluttony or demanding youth, but the tilt of the head gives it an element of seductiveness. It could be that the figure is offering these cigarettes rather than consuming them.

There are a number of paintings of groupings of people in this exhibition, including a picture of a red-tinted audience gazing at some event in “Sometimes Everyone Looks Hairy” (2006), and a picture of a huddled mass of children with numbers on their chest in “Red, Yellow, Blue” (2006). The tri-colored group of children might be a comment on the psychology of the crowd, the loss of individuality.

Another painting with multiple figures, “Let’s queue” (2006), depicts three adults. One man is dressed as a centaur and wears a suit jacket, and the woman dressed as a mermaid holds a handbag. They could be waiting in line for a movie, and the casual combination of the ordinary and the extraordinary invites multiple readings.

Keith Mayerson, whose work is on view at Derek Eller Gallery, paints pictures of pop-culture narrative and icons, but he is not interested in deconstructing our worship of celebrity. His work is about the painful and euphoric process of losing oneself in someone else. His painting style features energetic and tactile brushstrokes and a lush, subtly modulated palette. The effect is so sensual and earnest that we forget we are looking at images we have seen hundreds if not thousands of times before: The Beatles showered in confetti during their first visit to America, in the painting “The Beatles 1964” (2006); Elvis thrusting his pelvis forward as he balances on his toes onstage in the painting “Elvis ’56” (2006). As many times as we have seen these images, Mr. Mayerson manages to create surprising and beautiful translations into oil paint. The medium slows things down, and lends these beloved figures a timeless and elegiac quality.

In the painting “Temptation on the Mount (King Kong and Fay Wray battle the Giant Taradactyle)” (2006), the gorilla clutches Fay Wray with one hand and fends off a dinosaur bird with the other. In this painting, these aren’t silly Hollywood special effects. They represent aspects of our humanity (which they also do in the original film). But the sensuality of Mr. Mayerson’s brushstrokes lends a tactile quality that is missing from the film.

Rielly until November 22 (532 W. 24th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-675-3421);

Mayerson until November 25 (615 W. 27th St., between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Highway, 212-206-6411).