Dan Piersol’s The Poetry of Migration exemplifies the abstract qualities in his earthy works.

When artists die, they leave behind a “body of work.” With any luck, their body of work holds up a little better than their own body at that point. Of course, dead artists are not always famous, but if they were any good, the work has a certain, almost palpable sense of life. The influential German philosopher Walter Benjamin went so far as to say that an art work has an “aura,” while Marcel Duchamp once said that a successful painting has “a life” that lingers on for decades after it was made.

It sounds almost mystical, but the connection between bodies and art works, especially paintings, is very old, and shows no sign of abating any time soon. Margaret Evangeline’s paintings at Simonne Stern seem to play off of this corporeal connection. Although there is no human figure suggested by their abstract swatches and splotches of paint on polished aluminum panels, neither is there any shortage of innuendo about the almost biological sense of life shimmering from their oddly atmospheric surfaces. Feminine innuendo.

The titles set a certain tone. In the Uterine Fury of Marie Antoinette series, 4-foot square panels of burnished aluminum glisten like sleekly outfitted race cars under thin layers of drippy oil paint and clear lacquer. Moire patterns of polished metal glow like waves on a metallic sea as richly hued splotches of paint suggest drippy polka dots hovering over the surface. The silky metallic finish is a sleek touch, but Evangeline’s deep reds, purples and sooty dark oil pigments hark to the final days of the French dynasty, the Revolution and the guillotine.

So it’s really quite theatrical. The metallic moire surfaces dripping with decorous splatters of bloody red and royal purple evoke big-time PMS at Versailles palace, and the clamor of mobs who want something a little more carnivorous than cake. Yet, despite the cataclysmic overtones, their aura is as decorously intimate as a message left in lipstick on a bathroom mirror, a message perhaps sealed with the residue of a crimson kiss. The innuendo goes on for miles, and related works with titles like Taints and Poisons or Yellow Girl Blues do nothing to dispel the impression of highly motivated hormones in action. Elegant, fun stuff. Evangeline may live in New York, but her local roots are showing.

If Evangeline coaxes passion from polished metal, Dan Piersol somehow transforms human figures into something strangely abstract. The Poetry of Migration is a large oil featuring a headless Winged Victory at the end of a pier, under a blazing sun, which, like the rest of the painting, is defined by a maze of sketchy highlights against a black and purple ground. The Winged Victory saunters along the edge of the pier amid a welter of stray birds, wine bottles, knives and ladies high heeled pumps, all of which suggest that she is far from her old home on Olympus. In these works, Piersol explores a curious kind of art about art, as antique, mythic and timeless figures forsake their arid golden pavilions in favor of much livelier, if much more earthy, environs.

Meanwhile, at Marguerite Oestreicher, Gary Komarin holds sway. Komarin’s cartoonish expressionism somehow ends up looking rather faux-naive, but not in a bad way. Like rich kids who play at being blues musicians, faux-naive artists get a bad rap for being faux-nies, but Komarin takes it to another level with work that looks so strikingly naive that it could only be the product of intense artistic cunning. (They sort of dare you to prove that they weren’t made by a 5-year-old.) The Italian Cake is a splotchy outline of a what might be a layer cake or possibly a baroque tower somewhere in Italy, and it takes a minute to notice the whimsical, architectonic precision of its execution.

Komarin’s heads are especially droll, yet still architectural. The French Wig suggests a crude brunette hairdo atop a shaft of pink flesh that is vaguely head-shaped but devoid of any features. That blankness leaves a lot to the imagination; it could be a naive attempt at a portrait, but it might also be a crude depiction of a black latex condom — you never really know for sure. Is Komarin a joker? Yes, but he’s also serious, and his ambiguity is such that you never really know what’s what. As he says about his French Wig, it is “something to put on something.” Indeed, but with Komarin you never know for sure when he’s putting you on.