Does a nostalgia for 50's kitsch prevail in these multilayered paintings? In this, her first solo show in New York, Linda Burnham uses as background snappy real tablecloths from that era painted over with peppy pictograms of people taken from 1950's graphic design catalogues.
In ''Pink Plaid,'' for instance, a tablecloth of that description underlies a vignette of a man and a woman who appear to be arguing before a keyhole. Scribbles, strokes and swirls of white and black paint float around and over them. ''Picnic'' is even busier, with two men cavorting on another plaid cloth as a woman in the background peruses a menu. The leg of a third man is seen at top of the painting, and a buzz of paint and line run through it.
These odd dissonances of stereotyped image, real artifact and paint scrawls do not lend themselves to ready explication. But Ms. Burnham is demonstrably skilled at creating visual noise. GRACE GLUECK