CHICAGO—The main room of Sandra Bermudez’s second solo show at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery, “The Happy Pussy and Other Endings,” showcases, as the title suggests, The Happy Pussy (2009), a 55-foot wall installation of positive linguistic and pictoral euphemisms meant to counter negative connotations associated with the slang term for female genitalia, which is itself pertly displayed in a pink neon sign.

The rest of the artwork is composed of 19 metallic die-cut print objects that look like something between store-window advertisements and a dreamy 14-year-old’s notebook doodles. Scattered over the length of the wall, these present words like tulip, velvet, yum-yum, and cuntkin, and images including a bow, peaches, flowers, and honey. With them, Bermudez uses humor and whimsy to call attention to negative perceptions and representations of the female body, and the combination of pop-culture aesthetics and text brings to mind the work of Chicago’s Ken Fandell and Los Angeles–based artist Ed Ruscha.

Filling out the exhibition, on view through May 9, are other recent works, including Jonah’s Daughter (2008), an enlarged snapshot that Bermudez, a New York–based artist with Colombian origins, appropriated from a college porn website. The topless female subject has been cut out of the picture, leaving an audience photographing and recording an empty silhouette — and the viewer thinking about the role of the public in negative portrayals of women by questioning audience intentions.

In the wallpaper installation Blue American Pastoral (2008), part of an ongoing series, Bermudez moves from the public realm of signage to the domestic comfort of home décor. She also shifts from a quickly apparent visual read to a quaint decorative motif that hides underlying sexualized content. Blue American Pastoral (2008) combines toile (the 18th-century French pastoral decorative motif, currently in vogue) with sexualized images of teenagers running through the forest that are taken from contemporary clothing advertisements and are apparent only upon close examination. The sexual nature of the installation is reminiscent of Robert Gober’s Male and Female Genital Wallpaper, while the use of pop culture themes in the medium is reflective of wallpaper installations by Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami.

The show’s title piece, The Happy Pussy and Other Endings (2009), hangs on its own wall and acts as a physical and conceptual transition between the installation The Happy Pussy and the rest of the show. It consists of a reflective sign made of die-cut aluminum depicting the title phrase. The letters are surrounded with what, from far away, appears to be a decorative lace pattern, but upon closer inspection reveals itself to be a mélange of ghosts, elephants, rainbows, and other pictures in a storybook style. The piece combines the text focus of The Happy Pussy with the more-than-meets-the-eye approach of Blue American Pastoral and embodies Bermudez’s particular blending of pop culture and feminist ideology.

This weekend, if you need a break from all the booths at Art Chicago, Bermudez suggests some other exhibitions to check out:

1. Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H.C. Westerman Study Collection at the Smart Museum of Art, through September 6
“This folk-art master resonates in contemporary art.”

2. USA Today at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, through May 3
“Reminds one of the importance of being an artist.”

3. Olio at Tony Wight Gallery, through May 30
“This is a beautiful show of collages by smart artists.”

4. Angelina Gualdoni: Proposals for Remnants at Kavi Gupta Gallery, through May 9
“Her images of failed structures reverberate with our current economic situation.”

5. Laura Fayer: Pull of the Moon at Thomas Robertello Gallery, through June 13
“She creates intimate systems with her gestural mark making.”