Santa Monica

What do Rousseau, the Metaphysical School, child art and the new so called archaic painting have in common? A breathless, palpable nostalgia for a world of innocence or heroics or eroticism or mystery--or all of these. That’s the complicated bill that fuels the painting of Mexico’s Roberto Marquez. He has a fitful talent for building nubile nudes from smokey, dramatic edges.

“Life Is Not a Dream But It Can Be” has four finely modeled, rhythmic nudes promenading in front of a circusy facade. The shallow backdrop has bright blue pillars and walls worked thick with ground marble added to oil. This material looks like stucco and plays against the texture of smooth graceful skin. On the walls Marquez incises wispy puerile drawings of Mayan sun symbols, heraldic dogs, silly cartoon cars.

Symbolism gets a bit literal in “When you Travel to Itaca . . .,” with its histrionic couple straining to pull a toy cart shaped like a church, or “The Game,” where a gal kicks off her red high heels to have a seaside tug-o-war with Death. “The Theory of the Bear” makes the most of Marquez’s knack for the enigmatic and his versatile drawing skills. He uses a flat, crystalline approach to make a surreal angry bear in an exotic flat jungle, then plugs in his supple, moody figuration to shape the two half clad girls that beat off the fuzzy adversary.

Sculptor Kristen Marvel casts bronze in the role of petrified organic matter eroded and serrated. “Fu” is typical. Metal looks like a craggy obelisk of blanched wood. On top of this at a lateral axis she teeters more bronze, now worked to look like a metal fragment worn to a brittle, airborne flake. Driftwood, old metal, that’s the stuff sidewalk art shows are made of. At her best, Marvel handles this tricky turf with unamateurish elegance. (Shoshana Wayne, 1454 5th St., to July 5.)