The first solo show, from a 29-year-old Swiss-born artist who now lives in New York, suggested an expanding and contradicting worker's day. Relief sculptures of colossal clothing items, such as Uniforms (Hank & Frank), depicting overalls and collarless shirts hanging on wall pegs, shared the sparsely populated gallery space lilliputian figurines like Happy Workers (Hank & Frank) I which wear the same clothes but are only eight inches tall. In one corner lurked a sculpture of a humongous pair of boots rendered in neoprene and styrofoam; shown unlaced, these looked comfy enough for a giant homeboy to step into. Cowering in another corner on the floor were two grisaille sculptures of an oversized lunchbox and thermos roughly two feet tall. Center stage was occupies by Happy Workers (Bella & Stella) II, diminutive sculptures of cleaning women holding a mop and pail full of "solid" grey water. Roughly the same size as teh thermos, these polychrome figures seemed to demarcate one of htose on-the-job moments of relative relaxation. Yet the longer you thought about them, the more those chipmunk-like faces began to read as images of simpering slavery, which may allude to the plight of illegal aliens in America and to the group of what are known in Switzerland and Germany as Gastarbeiter or "guest workers".

Oates's sculptures are all handmade and extremely labor-intensive. Executed by an elaborate process involving clay models, wax casts, second molds and hand painting, each piece can take upto six months to complete. This is not readily apparent to the eye, but in hindsight it certainly enhances the subject matter of work, an iconography with a rich 19th-Century pedigree including Courbet and Ford Madox Brown. The trope of happy workers also plays off the whole notion of a cottage indutry, here rendered obnoxiously appealing in Oates's Disneyesque vision of clean clothes, clean floors and, by extension, clean values. One figurine, Happy Workers (Father Patrick), depicts a benevolent-looking priest. I was tempted to see a typical Swiss fastidiousness in the sculptor's devotion to supervising every excrutiating detail of the process and to the somewhat grating finesse of the finished products.

Oates's process lends a certain willful perversity to objects which initially look mass-produced. In this respect, he partakes of a new zeitgeist which emphasizes hand-crafted renditions of diminutive clothing, as in the tiny apparel sculptures of Charles LeDray. Oates's objects differ from the manufactured work of Jeff Koons in that the younger artist's imagery is not appropriated from popular sources; each of these proletarian icons was, somewhat unbelievably, invented by Oates. The presentation of the smaller figurines on metal shelving may seem derivative of Haim Steinbach, and the convetion of exhibiting workers' suits as social sculpture has an obvious precedent in Joseph Beuys. Yet this show provided a refreshing space for ruminating on the fate of the original work, and worker, in an age of appropriation.

(Translated from Spanish to English by Terry Myers)

The little cartoon people that Daniel Oates makes are named "Happy Workers" by the artist: Hank & Frank the workmen, Bella & Stella the cleaning women, and even Father Patrick the priest all seem to be in utter bliss as they pose in their occupational gear, so diminutive in size and cute in demeanor that we the viewers feel utterly secure in our position of power, or so we think. If these figurative sculptures are marxist in attitude, we ask ourselves, then we know at least that they are merely depictions of marxist toys, harmless (not to mention the fact that they're in - of all places - an art gallery, where no one ever is truly threatened). With what seems to by a loving touch, Oates fabricates his placated yet dignified characters in painstaking, make-believe detail, placing them like large trinkets (trophies?) on shelves, or allowing them to stand on their own, ready to earn their keep on the showroom floor. A large Lunchbox & Thermos also sits on the gallery floor - Hank & Frank clearly need to economize, but like most good art, they are not cheap.

Most troublesome is the piece called Uniforms (Hank & Frank), which consists of enormous (they're the size of costumes worn by character actors at Disneyland) versions of the overalls worn by the workmen hung up on a wooden pegboard, with two pairs of boots on the floor underneath. We could be in real trouble if these big boys came back to the gallery to get dressed and didn't care for the distraction of our presence. After all, how many of us like to be watched while we work? Never fear, however, like most art, this stuff makes it clear that it wants to be loved more than anything else in the whole wide world, as Hank, Frank, Bella, Stella, and Father Patrick raise their big yearning cow eyes up to meet our ever-so-masterful gaze.

The best thing about this first solo show by a young artist (b. 1964) is that it is politically dexterous - 0ates seems to be interested in creating a complicated, not didactic, social situation with his work. Are these examples of stereotypical lower class role players actually happy with their lot? Do they whistle while they work? Or maybe things are a little uneasy under the surfaces of sculpted and painted faces that smile in the midst of what must be one of the most cynical and self-conscious places in the world: the New York art gallery. I can honestly say that I love this work in more ways than one - not only in the obvious "How much is that puppy in the window?" fashion, but also in a manner that is fundamentally twisted. With the so-called "happiness" of the "worker" often comes some of the most depraved and violent behavior imaginabte, as employees turn into killers overnight. This is just the sort of thing I imagine to be under the skin of Oates' little figures. What's not to love?