Two years ago, Daniel Oates exhibited doll-like, tot-size figures of working class people, including a pair of policemen, inspired by his memories of television cartoons. The work was impeccably made, but smach4 of class-based stereotyping that can linger around even the best-intentioned caricatures.

Although Mr. Oates's new sculptures wisely move to different territory, they end up on another kind of uncertain ground. In this case, he has opted for a phantasmagoric version of playthings whose meanings feel opaque. A pair of ears covered in hair suggest a grotesque, if invisible, face. A huge hand emerges from the shell of a benignly smiling turtle (Christy Rupp was doing work that looked like this a decade ago). A pair of batlike wings carries a narrative painting.

The painting, at least, seems to give some clue as to what Mr. Oates may be getting at. Its image of a leafy tree with an immense serpent crawling among its branches suggests an endangered Eden (the bat wings, of course, are associated with devils, not angels), from which the dissonant sculptural forms - corruptions of the familiar but also something new - may be said to emerge. The idea doesn't gel here, but the paradise lost of childhood is a central theme of art in the 199O's, and it will be interesting to see where Mr. Oates takes it.

Daniel Oates makes figurative and representational sculptures steeped in fantasy, irony, and humor. Born in Switzerland and raised m England, he brings a distinctly old-world brand of craftsmanship to contemporary art. Over the course of his career, Oates has mastered a staggermg number of carving, casting, and constructing techniques, and all of his work shows a perfectionist's touch.

Oates earned an international reputation in the early 1990s for his "Happy Worker" series of fire-plugsize, caricatured depictions of everyday laborers. Made from carved and painted wood, polyester resin, or urethane foam, these figures include mechanics, cleaning women, police officers, a priest, and a postman. Apple-cheeked and beatifically smiling, the workers are astonishingly detailed. Cops (1993), a pair of New York City police officers for which Oates sewed tiny uniforms, are goggle-eyed munchkins equipped with tiny radios, revolvers, and nightsticks. Happy Workers (Bela and Stella) II (1992) are kerchief-wearing, German-style Purzfrauen who gaze warmly at the viewer as they work their brooms and mops. The unabashedly cute figures share the stylized surfaces and over-bright colors of cartoon characters. Although none of these works would appear out of place In a Disneyland diorama, their sensibility is as much Jean Baudrillard as Bugs Bunny. Through their giddy simulation, they call into question social structures normally taken for granted.

Oates began carving the "Happy Workers" freehand with no preconceived plan and little awareness of his inspiration. Gradually he realized that they came from distant memories of television shows he saw in England as a child. These stop-action animation programs, made using posable figurines, told stories of everyday life in imaginary cities. Everyone in these towns, Oates recalls, had clearly defined jobs, and he says, "[What] I found interesting about them [was] the fact that although there was a crisis, things were always very clearly resolved." The "Happy Workers" were attempts to recover the purity of those memories. The "Happy Workers" represent a contemporary example of what the artist calls "Egyptian culture." Oates is intrigued by the idea that in Pharaonic Egypt, where culture remained largely static for centuries, every individual had a place in society. "Today, people are craving identity," he says. In their simple uniforms and absorption in their tasks, the "Happy Workers" are kitschy yet seductive hieroglyphs of secure self-images and social order. Oates also says making the "Happy Workers" is a form of self-portraiture; he identifies with their industriousness.

Other work of the mid-1990s demonstrates a savvy understanding of the power of contemporary symbols. "Glock"(l994), an automatic pistol made of wood and gray and black enamel paint, transmutes an icon of street culture into an absurd monument. its proportions changed to make it hugely oversize as well as clunkier and clumsier, the gun manifests an unsettling mixture of violent menace and playful charm. Similarly, Oates has constructed a disconcertingly large lunch box and thermos set and a pair of gigantic construction worker uniforms, complete with enormous hats, wrenches, sledgehammers, and workboots.

Oates's newest large-scale sculptures, which were recently included in a two-person show with St. Paul artist Mary Esch at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis are based on fairy tales and slippery, shifting childhood memories. "Something Too Distant (Ear)" (1997), a circus-peanut-orange ear made of carved and painted styrene and epoxy whose backside becomes a spiraling shell, is both an experiment with related shapes and a response to a haunting recollection of finding a human ear in a hedgerow with his sister when he was a boy. Other works are intended to function-both in title and in form - as snippets of children's' stories, perhaps seen out of the corner of the eye on television or glimpsed in a book. "And This Beast Had (wings) (1997)" is a set of detached dragon's wings made of wood, Fiberglass, and felt. Although they have a sinister batlike swoop, their cheery green baize scales bring them back to the safe world of fantasy. "So he decided to take (a nap (l997)" mines a similar vein. Inside one of a giant pair of boots, constructed from many different thicknesses of black neoprene foam, is a tiny sleeping figure - a sort of hybrid of Rumplestiltskin and Tom Thumb. All of the work is a response to American rationalism. "The United States is obsessed with truth," Oates says. "There is not enough room for belief. For all its professed interest in proof and solid fact, contemporary society longs for myth and innocence." Oates creates open-ended narratives that force the viewer to concoct their own fables.

What unites Oates's disparate activities - which include not only making works of art, but also building musical instruments and designing puppets - is their products' desire to delight, amuse, and instruct In a sense, he is modern - day Gepetto, a master toymaker for the information age. Like the best toys, Oates's sculptures are magical reflections of the big world. in their ingenuous artificiality, they teach us about how things work and make reality easier to bear. Perhaps, though, more than anything, they want to be loved.