Pairing quiet and chaotic

Megan Williams received her bachelor of fine arts from CalArts in 1978, Jessica Minckley from Otis in 2005. Their parallel solo shows at the Carl Berg Gallery -- Williams’ 17th, Minckley’s first -- make for an illuminating glimpse across generations, each accomplished in its way but driven by fundamentally different concerns.

Williams was among the 16 artists included in MOCA’s historic 1992 “Helter Skelter” exhibition, and her work continues to exude the irreverent vitality that defined that group. Her signature style is unmistakable: cartoonish forms -- mostly human figures and anthropomorphized buildings in this selection of pieces -- characterized by a rubbery agility, giddy pictorial buoyancy and an often furious sense of internally generated motion.

The predominant dynamic throughout the show is the tension between immobility and propulsion, claustrophobic containment and ecstatic release, reflected especially in the jaunty motif of the skyscraper. In a midsize painting called “Untitled (Building Escaping),” one such skyscraper wrenches free from the architectural tangle of its surroundings and flees on human legs. In another, titled simply “Rage,” a similar building whirls into a cyclone of wrath, hurling a fist toward the viewer while spewing its contents -- pieces of furniture, rolls of toilet paper, alarm clocks -- in every direction.

Most of these paintings involve relatively centralized compositions whose pictorial activity looks to be held together by centripetal force. In the largest and most exhilarating work, however -- a wall-sized installation of five small canvases revolving around a figure who seems part-woman, part-tree and part-slingshot -- this force falls away and the forms seem to explode beyond the bounds of the central canvas, the imagery skimming from canvas to wall to canvas and beyond.

Minckley has a much lighter approach: Her exhibition is quiet, delicate and contemplative. Each piece feels considered and specific in nature, a sequence of discrete conceptual statements rather than a windstorm of broad thematic strokes.

But for her consistently delicate touch, Minckley has no signature style to speak of, nor any overriding affiliation with a particular medium. The show combines drawing and found object sculpture with an ease that’s become typical among younger artists (thanks in part to the influence of two other “Helter Skelter” artists, Jim Shaw and Mike Kelley), though Minckley’s drawing is particularly skillful.

The most enchanting works are the simplest: a series of pattern-oriented drawings made on the epigraph pages of books; a ceiling-high stack of pink cake boxes; a MormonAd (a poster distributed by the Mormon Church) coated with a thick crust of salt. Concise yet enigmatic, each has the air of a meditative exercise.

Notably absent is anything approximating Williams’ fierce sense of propulsion -- which is to say, the spirit of rebellion that “Helter Skelter” so brilliantly encapsulated. But what, one might ask, is there for an artist of Minckley’s generation to propel away from? The market is booming; L.A. has become a widely respected art capital; galleries are sweeping up artists right out of school; political tensions are high, but without the degree of mobilization that prevailed in the late 1970s; and no particular stylistic or ideological hegemony predominates.

A young artist today comes to distinction by different, perhaps subtler means. There is much to be gained from both approaches.

Carl Berg Gallery, 6018 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 931-6060, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.carlberggallery.com.

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Iconic interiors dripping brashly

Twenty-eight-year-old Rosson Crow was slated for art stardom at an early age, it seems, having received her first New York solo show the year she completed her undergraduate degree at the School of Visual Arts (2004). She’s since earned a master of fine arts at Yale, had two more New York shows and been profiled in Vogue, Interview and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Los Angeles and is making her West Coast debut at Honor Fraser with “Night at the Palomino,” a group of nine large, colorful paintings depicting iconic interiors such as the Koenig House, the Cocoanut Grove and CBGB.

It’s easy to see why the work would attract the sort of attention it has: It’s big, brash, cocky and nothing if not eye-catching. Spend a little time in the gallery, however, and it becomes clear that Crow really has only a handful of tricks: nostalgic interiors, garish colors, fervent strokes and lots of drips. Most were exhausted by the Leipzig School of painters some time ago and to far more substantive effect.

Her one notable shift in the last couple years -- from Baroque interiors to kitschy American ones -- serves only to underscore the fact that she renders virtually all these interiors in the same fixed, proscenium-like proportions. One is left to wonder whether all the clutter she piles into the intermediate space isn’t just a flourish to distract from the realization that she’s not capable of any other method of perspective -- which is a sad thing to have to wonder.

The sole painting in the current show that deviates from this spatial formula is also the only one that struck me as genuinely cohering into something greater than the sum of its frantic parts. “Koenig House,” in mimicking Julius Shulman’s famous photograph (a cliche in itself, but let that pass), is forced to reckon with the vast volume of space beyond the house’s windows.

Crow is clearly not without talent or the sort of audacity that, combined with talent, can lead to very exciting painting -- which is what makes this show ultimately so dismaying. Success can have toxic effects. The most serious -- indeed, disastrous -- for a young artist is excessively narrowing the potential for risk or perverting one’s concept of it altogether.

In considering this show, I’ve found myself unable to shake the distastefully cynical feeling that these are the sort of paintings that make collectors feel good about themselves. They’re bold, expensive, slightly (but not unpleasantly) uncomfortable to look at and loaded with gestures that look like risks without actually threatening anybody.

Honor Fraser, 2622 La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 837-0191, through March 29. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.honorfraser.com.

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A chapter from colonial times

“In the Court of the Crimson King” is Frohawk Two Feathers’ second solo show at Taylor de Cordoba and the second chapter of an epic saga whose details are difficult to keep straight. They’re scrawled on a long, scroll-like sheet posted to a gallery wall for those who want to give it a try. But the themes are all too familiar: power, war, colonialism, imperialism and the lure of global trade.

The hero is one Nancy of Gonaives, heir to the fictional kingdom of Frengland, who has embarked on a mission to avenge his father’s death and reclaim the throne from his villainous uncle, Lord William (a.k.a. King Billy). Haiti figures in the story in some way, as do the sugar trade, the Inuit people, a pope and a certain pink sperm whale, hunted with Ahab-like obsession by the ill-fated King L’Oreal.

The bulk of the story is told through drawings and paintings that mimic the conventions of colonial-era genres -- particularly portraiture -- while remaining wonderfully fresh and strange. The project is a peculiar one that manages to balance a number of unlikely qualities -- lighthearted and earnest, endearing and unsettling, humorous and scathingly critical.

Two Feathers, who goes by a number of different pseudonyms, seems to have a lot going on: He has several musical projects underway and will perform at the gallery Saturday as Kent Cyclone. The full scope may take some time to unfold, but the promise is striking.

Taylor de Cordoba, 2660 La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 599-9156, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.taylordecordoba.com.

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‘Genesis,’ in truth

Courbet’s 1866 painting “The Origin of the World” is about as frank and unambiguous a depiction of female genitalia as one could ask for in oil paint: a radical expression of the artist’s then-progressive doctrine of Realism that remains shocking even today.

David Brady’s 2007 piece “The Origin of the World Wallpaper” poses a clever inversion of Courbet’s paradigm. Insofar as contemporary photographic porn, now so prevalent as to have become utterly banal, is the logical extension of Courbet’s Realism, Brady reverses the process by fracturing pornographic images into kaleidoscopic patterns and deploying them for purely decorative purposes, returning the image of sexuality to an abstract state and raising the question of which approach more closely approximates the “truth” Courbet was seeking.

The piece is one of several gem-like puzzles in “Genesis,” Brady’s second solo show at High Energy Constructs. A body-sized panel of black bulletproof glass (“Knowledge of Self”) installed across the gallery from the white lid of a coffin (“Everything Doesn’t Not Have an Opposite”); ornate seashell-like forms made from hundreds of fake fingernails; crystals grown from the artist’s own tears -- each has the air of a meticulously crafted conceptual haiku. They tackle sweeping subjects -- birth, death, the body, sex, sorrow -- with elegantly economical means.

High Energy Constructs, 990 N. Hill St., Suite 180, Los Angeles, (323) 227-7920, through March 8. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.highenergyconstructs.com.