It seems official: Representational, or figurative, painting is making a big comeback. Not that other styles of painting are out or that installation and sculpture have faded. But a form that once looked on the verge of disappearing, that once seemed uncool and anti-modern, is popping up all over. And in some works, it even boasts surprising post-20th century sensibilities.

Some credit the recession with a return of painting in general, as big and “clumsy” sculptural works were increasingly hard and expensive to ship and even exhibit. But, obviously, much more has been going on as well,, as can be seen in the three solo shows at Edge Zones.

Mary Malm’s “Bathers” and Kristen Thiele’s “Paintings” are both terrific and both based on photography — or actually, in the case of Thiele, on old film stills. And yet both women have tweaked the realism in the scenes and settings enough (sometimes very subtly) to create an alternate reality.

Thiele, who had been at the ArtCenter/South Florida and now works out of Bridge Red Studios, which also hosts art shows and which she shares with her father, Robert Thiele, has detailed the “ultimate” high-life in these works with great light and color. But based as they are on 1930s movies, these scenes of the glamorous life were never real to begin with; they were and remain fantasy. As she describes, these paintings are about “the artifice and drama that make ordinary things magical.”

Malm, who teaches at Miami International University, spent time snapping photos of women of a certain age out on the beach. These bodies are no longer toned and youthful, which on Miami beaches can be even more striking than if the setting was further north on the Atlantic coast. And, yet, they are out there, mostly still in two-piece bathing suits, walking, sunning, living in their current-age bodies. Although Malm says she left the color of the ocean, for instance, as accurate as possible, other parts of the background and scenery have been manipulated. In other words, this is realistic painting and it is not.

Unexpectedly interesting worlds are revealed in the Wynwood gallery this month.

The paintings of Mary Malm, Kristen Thiele and Kerry Yaklin hang on through Sept. 30 at Edge Zones, 47 N.E. 25th St., Miami; www.edgezones.org.