DIANE KEPFORD

The New York Times

NEW YORK, FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 1995

Art in Review
Figurative standouts

Fourth Annual National Showcase Exhibition

Alternative Museum
594 Broadway (near Houston Street)
SoHo
Through Aug.12

This big, uneven show of 50 artists doesn't seem particularly concerned with looking hip -- that's good - and some of the best entries are figurative works along traditional lines. Among them are Diane Kepford's oil-on-canvas female torso, thinly painted and glistening with a moist, metallic sheen, and Jose Morales's two fine charcoal and pastel drawings on paper, in which overlapping figures twist to gether.

The political scenarios of Michael G. Fabian's animal-shaped maps are at least eye-catching: the archipelagoes of Indonesia and the Philippines, for example, are transformed into a combative vulture and chicken, respectively, facing off in a cartographic turquoise sea.

The solo show in the museum's back gallery, "Meighan Gale: Suitcases (Her Leaving Trunk)" is the product of considerable energy. She has taken old suitcases, covered them with dried leaves or Barbie dolls or stuffed them with bed-springs and little television screens (the latter component owing a big debt to Maureen Connor's altogether more cogent use of the same hardware). Ms. Gale clearly has things she wants to say, but the results are overproduced and too unfocused to convey anything beyond a general sense of earnestness.

HOLLAND COTTER