Attending art show opening nights at Chelsea galleries has become one of New York's trendiest freebies. On a recent spring evening, there were no fewer than four openings taking place in gorgeous, airy spaces just blocks from each other in the far West 20s, with wine and glamorous patrons flowing from each one.

Two of these shows exemplify well the range of contemporary work currently on show in the city. At the Nicholas Robinson Gallery on West 20th Street, acrylic paint is the medium, applied to large canvases by artist John Copeland in thick, gloppy streaks.Copeland's paintings veer between figurative and abstract: the paint is so viscous that, although these are ostensibly figurative works (the groups of people obviously rendered from photographs), their effect is virtually abstract. The subjects of Copeland's paintings have no defined faces, and so, although they are posed to interact, they don't. The paintings' titles -- Graceland in the Window, Memories of You -- are the most communicative aspects of the work, even when they communicate nothing about the picture itself. You Should Have Known How Things Would End (above), for example, shows two bikini-clad women, each balanced on their boyfriends' shoulders in the ocean, as if they are about to splash each other, or jump, or be thrown in. How will things end? Why should we have known? In the faceless characters, there is no illumination to be found.

Round the corner, at the CUETOProject, the show, Fuzzy Logic, is all about marionettes, each with plenty to say. French artist Nicolas Darrot's strange, mechanical creations move on pulleys and speak in more or less discernible statements about their respective fates. A parrot, its head wired like a lab animal to a bowlful of its own brains, comments on captivity. A faceless figure (left), dressed in black, jabbers incessantly, its jaws clapping together, while two movie moguls with oddly shaped heads exchange industry clichés as they discuss a movie that will never get made.

The marionettes are strange, otherworldly creatures, each animated by its own set of mechanical devices, each caught in its own obsessions. They are trapped in the moment, repeating and repeating, every one a spectacle of existential meaninglessness.

But they're fun and fascinating, and the crowd at the opening (so many French people in New York!) were fully engaged with them -- looking, listening, talking about them as the figures went through their paces.

Back at the Copeland opening a block away, the visitors were all talking to each other. The art around them was impenetrable. - Sue Woodman

Fuzzy Logic: CUETOProject, 551 West 21st. Street, NY 110011
Until June 20, 2009

John Copeland: Old Glory, 535 West 20th Street, NY 10011
Until May 16, 2009

Ms. Woodman is an ex-Brit and veteran journalist with a keen eye for detail.