Art Review

In Action: That no one really gets hurt in the crashing, clattering cacophony of cartoons is a given. So, too, is it assumed that the artificial realm of the action movie offers benign release for the viewer.

Megan Williams’ new “action paintings” at Christopher Grimes Gallery cast a shadow of doubt across such staple theories. Her humor has an edge, and it’s pointed at the very activities and entertainments we tend to take for granted.

Child’s play, for instance. The centerpiece of this small show is an assemblage of 27 modest-sized canvases hung in a ragged circle (108 inches across at its widest) that looks as if it’s been sent spinning by centrifugal force. Titled “The Sky Is Falling,” the disjointed scene represents apocalypse, at floor level.

The players--victims, perpetrators and bystanders--are all kids’ toys, painted sympathetically in ebullient color on raw linen. The action spills from canvas to canvas: A red wagon overturns, a choo-choo derails, a doll lies in flames, little men on missiles upset the Cheerios bowl, sending milk splattering, while a chubby helicopter catches in its beam the character Max from Maurice Sendak’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are,” running off with a mischievous smirk on his face.

Williams has painted naughty subjects before--characters masturbating or passing gas. But this tableaux has a darker, deeper honesty to it.

Innocence, violence and pleasure conspire with disarming ease in this doomsday spectacle. The cute, dazed little duck wearing a halo of stars will recover, in its own cartoonish way; but for us, the implications of this fun house gone awry remain to unsettle and provoke.

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* Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 587-3373, through Jan. 31.