SANTA MONICA

Maryann Voveris has gone a considerable distance since she began carving expressionistic figures of rough-hewn wood. She still hacks out muscular nudes with crazed eyes and prominent lips who flaunt their sexuality. She continues to entwine them in complex configurations, but she has expanded her vocabulary. Instead of packing the figures into explosive totem poles, she now positions them in scenarios that emphasize tense relationships or serve as metaphors for contemporary existence. The central message of pent-up frustration hasn’t changed, however, nor has the supercharged energy level.

In a new batch of 10 painted sculptures from 1986 and 1987, we find one man about to take a “High Dive” off a board, another teetering through a precarious “Balancing Act” on a plank supported by two other figures. A couple of family groups thrash it out, one trapped inside the frame of an undersize house, the other in a thorn patch. “Embraceable You” depicts a loving couple on a chair and a ring of dancing figures pulls together, but they seem certain to self-destruct through sheer momentum. The only placid work in the show consists of a female figure lying on a table-like structure. Titled “She Needs Time to Think,” even this hints at trouble.

Much about this work is familiar: It draws on Northwest American Indian and African forms and, most extensively, on German Expressionist sculpture as it continues the Modernist tradition of reconsidering “primitive” art. At the same time, Voveris’ art corresponds to a strain of folk-related sculpture practiced by artists such as Barbara Spring and Jim Lawrence. But as she develops the narrative possibilities of her work and its relevance to life outside the art world she seems to be forging a distinctive place for herself where historical influences are more ancestral guiding spirits than active informants. (Karl Bornstein Gallery, 1662 12th St., to June 26.)