Santa Monica

“Loaded” is a group show with a big, slippery theme: “The placement of the body in social, psychological, theoretical and aestheticized ways.” It takes a while to figure out how these ideas apply to each of the disparate objects in the show, but having the theme as a guide proves helpful in coming to grips with some of the odder pieces.

Fred Fehlau’s “Blinder” pieces have to do with the mind’s ability to piece together bits of information discovered by moving both the eyes as well as the entire body. Millie Wilson’s multipart paintings of newspaper pages seem to be about editorial judgments pertaining to the size and placement of photographs that get in the paper.

Marc Romano’s discreetly bulging, plaster fig-leaf painting blends with the color of the wall--a wry allusion to the supposed invisibility, in polite society, of the male sex organ. Michael Tidmus’ “Next,” a piece one reads from the implacable screen of a MacIntosh computer, presents fiction and fact about AIDS. Mark Niblock’s intensely evocative text-cum-photograph moves the reader into a fanciful dream with a bitter edge about AIDS and death.

Sarah Seager’s large, narrow suitcases stacked on top of each other suggest an irresolute body--at once in flight and at rest, and determined to take up as little space as possible. In “Plank Piece,” Charles Ray photographs a body punishing itself: a man who hangs from his stomach and from his knees on a plank wedged against the wall.

Peter Seidler’s bizarre arrangements of lead-enclosed shapes resemble office furniture and machines both recognizable and mysterious. They come in different sizes--”normal” and miniature--suggesting a bizarre “other dimension.” Yves Klein’s “Blue Venus”--the familiar armless torso painted in the artist’s special shade of electric blue--makes the impudent claim that an artist can re-create a famous sculpture simply by recoloring it.

Other work is by Maria Lonner, Martha Godfrey, Doug Hammett, Belinda Raczka, Tim Ebner, Nayland Blake and Allan McCollum. (Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, 1634 17th St., until Saturday.)