It would be difficult to find two artists more different than John Tarahteeff and Brian Tripp, yet each intrigues us with symbolic works whose sources are mysterious.

Tarahteeff's narrative paintings at Solomon Dubnick draw on a range of historical influences and are fraught with a kind of Freudian tension between male and female archetypes.

Tripp's paintings and sculptures at b. sakata garo draw on tribal symbolism and personal experiences that express his anger with the treatment of American Indians and his quest for personal transcendence.

Using a subtler palette than in the past, Tarahteeff takes us into a fictitious world of male-female relationships in which women are seductive but often unattainable.

"The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter" is a formidable Wagnerian woman who overpowers her surroundings as a leitmotif of symbols – phallic and transcendent – spring up between her legs. "Tending the Embers" suggests a hero/damsel-in-distress scenario as a male figure lights a fire to warm a freezing girl after an oil tanker crashes and goes down behind them.

Fishing figures also play an important role in Tarahteeff's new work, functioning as a metaphor for the act of creativity in which the artist "fishes" around in his subconscious to come up with a "catch."

In "Fishermen in the Old Country," a sea captain and his helpers struggle to land a huge fish in a small boat. In the background a pair of women in period dress have an altercation under a thunderous sky, broken by flashes of lightning. Though the meaning is elusive, the subtexts seem to suggest a heroic struggle against submerged forces that threaten to overpower the men, while the women in the background serve as both disruptive forces and objects of desire.

In "Fermata," three women (the Three Graces?) in band uniforms play musical instruments in front of the sea. The water, as in many of Tarahteeff's works, suggests sexual desire and the winsome women, while comic, are as enticing as sirens of the sea. Playing a bagpipe, a bell and a lute, they make unheard melodies that entice our imaginations with aural hallucinations. It's a wonderfully quirky image.

Tarahteeff is at the top of his form in these fascinating works that fill the former Solomon Dubnick annex on 25th Street, which is now the gallery proper. Though the space is smaller than the previous gallery on 20th Street, it is a very usable space and Tarahteeff's works look more cohesive in the more intimate space than they did in the rambling interior in the MARRS building.

Tripp, who is a California Indian, draws on his heritage and exemplifies the ad hoc nature of art in a series paintings and sculptures at sakata's 20th Street space. Using whatever is at hand – cardboard, duct tape, stones, wood, broken mirrors – he fashions strong abstract paintings and figurative sculptures that seem to embody the magic and mystery of tribal legends and rituals.

Bold color and expressionistic handling typify the two-dimensional works, many of which take the form of symbolic self-portraits. In "Me, Myself, and I Out in the Nighttime Sky," a trio of symbolic figures rises up under the moon over dark waves. "Me, Myself and I Home Talking With the Rocks, the River, the Trees and the Mountains" is a startling composition of red, silver, black and yellow with the same three figures in an abstracted landscape.

Tripp's sculptures range from flying, mirrored, half-bird, half-human figures made of wood and stone, such as "Chook, Chook (Osprey)," to wounded creatures with mottled, many-eyed heads made of stone and limbs made of sticks. The best of them ("Getting Off the Rock," " The Veteran," "What's on Her Mind" and "The Champ," among them) are powerful objects of spiritual force.

While there are perhaps too many small works in the show, this rare showing of Tripp's creations is not to be missed.