Whenever an artist has multiple exhibitions hanging simultaneously in different venues throughout a city, it is an opportunity to experience their work under different sets of conditions. These conditions can vary from something as obvious as a gallery’s scale, layout, or quality of light, to more subtle differences like the gallery’s neighborhood or even staff friendliness. Regardless of how they register, these shifts in context can expose previously hidden aspects of the artwork.

This compare-and-contrast scenario is seen in two current exhibitions, one uptown and one downtown, each showcasing the work of Joyce Robins and Harry Roseman. The downtown show is “Relief,” a two-person tug-of-war at the New York Studio School. Uptown at Lesley Heller Gallery, Ms. Robins and Mr. Roseman are each given a small solo exhibition, as are two other artists, Will Mentor and Gary Stephan.

At the New York Studio School, Ms. Robins’s colorful, perforated ceramic wall hangings and Mr. Roseman’s popinspired explorations of permutations of draped fabric are brought together under the broad rubric of relief sculpture. This complex, ancient art form ––combining both two- and three-dimensional elements into a single work, demanding it be both a continuous, flat plane as well have real, physical space that is not merely implied –– has been successfully used by many modern and contemporary artists, from Elie Nadelman and Jean Arp to Barbara Goodstein and Natalie Charkow Hollander.

Here, Ms. Robins plays with the concept of relief in two ways. Her craggy, tiedye colored, mostly rectangular glazed and painted clay pieces, such as “Bending Rectangle” (2006) –– which immediately brings to mind a kind of druggy lacework –– use facture and color to create an intimate, slightly disorienting encounter of flatness with space, an experience similar to looking at a star-filled night. But she also slightly twists and contorts these pieces, causing them to interact with the wall, effectively turning them into part of a larger equation of relief as it relates to the entirety of the gallery. Regrettably, the work is mounted to the wall in a too-rudimentary fashion by hammering nails through holes in the surface, a blunt tactic that sidetracks the viewer’s focus.

Mr. Roseman’s pieces spin the idea of trompe l’oeil together with relief sculpture. Also working with painted and fired clay, Mr. Roseman creates engaging amalgamations that have the architectural austerity of Assyrian reliefs and the color and subject matter of Pop Art.”Raspberries and Cream”(2004) is an over-sized hot pink clay napkin that clings flatly to the wall. Close inspection reveals this piece to be a nuanced terrain of wrinkles, folds, and creases. Other pieces are more fully realized representations of knots and drapes. One wall of the exhibition is crowded with Curtain Wall fragments, thick styrofoam relief sculptures resembling a collection of ruins.

While the work of both artists deals with issues related to relief sculpture, they are perhaps conceptually too different, with formal relationships too tenuous, to really encourage a dialogue between the works, other than one of discordant opposites. But still, there are good things to be seen here.

The situation gets really interesting when Ms. Robins and Mr. Roseman’s work moves uptown to Lesley Heller Gallery. Located in a third-floor walkup townhouse, this space –– composed of light-filled rooms and a few odd nooks –– is decidedly more apartment than gallery, and with a decidedly more welcoming staff. For Ms. Robins and Mr. Roseman, the particularity of this environment not only enhances the ideas driving the pieces, but it draws out a commonality between their works. Namely, that both artists’ work comes alive when exposed to the comfort and familiarity of a residence. Also on view here are three solid, optically dense paintings by Mr. Mentor, and one large, engaging abstract canvas and two goofy, repainted found objects by Mr. Stephan. But the main interest is Ms. Robins and Mr. Roseman.

Displayed in what is called the Dining Room, Ms. Robins’ objects begin to have a real reciprocal existence with their surroundings, a notion lost in the more traditional box-gallery setting. These pieces truly interact with the fireplace mantle, hearth, wood doorjambs, and window frames, marking out the loci of the room’s space. “Extra Long Oval” (2006) is wedged onto a narrow strip of wall, its pinched confines providing a momentary sensation of claustrophobia and an acute awareness of the constraints of the small room.

The Hallway, where Mr. Roseman’s works are located, is intimate and unorthodox. As with Ms. Robins’s work, the fact that these objects are being viewed in an apartment-cum-gallery heightens the viewer’s experience of the work’s underlying concepts of space. “Drape” (1996), a variable length of cloth linen meticulously hand-painted to resemble a sturdy brick wall, is pinned in the upper corner of the room. Bunched and slack, this piece takes the idea of trompe l’oeil and turns it on its head, playing with notions of the ambiguity of reality, and the possibility that a replica of an object is more real that the object itself.

“Relief” until December 9 (8 W. 8th St. at Fifth Avenue, 212-673-6466);

Lesley Heller show until November 18 (30 E. 92nd St., between Madison and Fifth avenues, 212-410-5340).