Santa Monica

Deborah Remington may have forsaken the emblematic, mechanistic images that characterized her 1984 show at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, but she has held on to her trademark silvery light and elegantly chilly palette in a show of ambiguous still lifes and interiors. Once again, her flair for the dramatic dresses up rather ordinary paintings.

Working in black, white, deep red and blue-violet, Remington pushes abstract components into mysterious confrontations. In each of about a dozen oils, action centers at the brightest spot on a white “stage” where we find objects colliding or a strange figure who might be writhing or dancing. Protagonists teeter on the back of a plane of light that extends into space from the foreground or spill out of a suspended “frame.” Fragments scatter while the unexplained struggle continues.

A few black-and-white works on paper flatten and formalize these ideas in handsome compositions that lack the sensuous appeal of the paintings. Meanwhile, a promising new direction presents itself in two paintings where leafy green shapes are major players in fertile landscapes. (Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 1454 5th St., to June 7.)