Chicago Sun-Times: GALLERY GLANCE

Phyllis Bramson, I Space, 230 W. Superior, (312) 587-9976; through June 1.

Bramson's new work at I Space is an outburst of optimism in her long, sometimes dark visual meditation on the nature and effects of sensuality. Shamelessly licentious and joyously bawdy, the paintings glow in seductive, creamy boudoir colors that border on sweet but then turn intriguingly mellow and sometimes tart.

The handmade quality of the work, which incorporates collage elements, adds to its sense of intimacy. Sequined cutouts and bits and pieces of flea market ephemera add the perfectly imperfect edge to her otherwise elegant surfaces. Imperfections make an experience human, be it sex or art. The feeling here in such works as "A Gentleman's Memoir" and "The Pleasuring Life" is one of wistful yearning toward some utopia of sensuality, an imagined land of milk and honey and guiltless orgy, where souls save themselves through pleasuring the bodies they inhabit.

Bubbles that turn into breasts and tears; little bouquets of kitten and baby heads; highly charged images such as these flirt with our feelings, flitting as they do between innocence and carnality. Likewise, the visual mix of Japanese figures, Victorian fairies, and children's book illustration confuses and bewitches us so that we are transported beyond reason to the time zone of imagination. Combined neatly into rows and registers, these far-flung references blend to suggest the woes and wishes of all humankind. By heaping up cliches of exotica, Bramson arrives at an accretion that suggests universality. This over-the-top quality in both composition and emotion is intentional. Bramson means to be both greedily inclusive and humorously excessive, although the humor here is deceptive, and like that of any good comedian, tinged with a fair measure of sorrow.

Robert Heinecken, Body Builder and Sportsman, 119 N. Peoria, (312) 492-7261; through June 8.

In this first exhibit of new work since his 35-year retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art two years ago, Robert Heinecken reinvents himself here as a mad toymaker. Many artists reprocess pop culture imagery, but Heinecken distinguishes himself from the pack of flippant ironists by thoroughly embracing the pop culture toward which others feel superior. He seems to love the pictures of TV dinner food glued to shaped eating trays, and he wants to teach you how to play his tilted pool table.

There is wit but no sense of distance here, so the work appears both rougher and more engaging than similar imagery created from a sense of irony. The work is simply playful, suggesting that life is a game to be played seriously and with childlike ferocity.

Most telling is his "Blackjack/Tableau Vivant," a three- dimensional tableau featuring a blackjack table, a life-size dealer dummy and a hand of cards all set up on an Oriental rug perpendicular to the viewer.

The effect is odd, to say the least. We see the whole scene as if from above and it gives us the perspective of God, or perhaps that of an out-of-body experience. Seeing something from above implies omniscience. We are meant to look down on it, quite literally. Yet Heinecken's perspective on his subject matter is anything but one of looking down, and perhaps that's his point, to show us what a bad view superiority really offers.