ORGANIZED BY SAN Francisco's Velvet da Vinci gallery, this traveling exhibition presents an incredible collection of chess pieces by 90 international artists. The artists' only constraint was that each piece had to be small enough to play on a standard chessboard. Otherwise, anything was fair game, and the results are more than just a fabulous bunch of pint-size sculptures; they also provide fascinating insight into the perceived "essential qualities" of these 1,000-year-old characters. Kings and queens predominate, not surprisingly. Their powerful roles, combined with their strong gender identification, served as creative (and humorous) inspiration for artists Dawn Emms, whose pink queen is busting out all over, and Hilary Pfeifer, whose purple queen wears stripes, polka dots, and a very suggestive strip of decorative fur. Wendy-Sarah Pacey's queen is yet another example of gender-coded "pink think": two pink-and-black high-heeled shoes perched on a white pedestal. The piece may be faceless, breastless, and otherwise ungirlie, but its taste in accessories leaves no doubt about what it represents. The knights are similarly plentiful and playful, especially Felieke van der Leest's decapitated horses, which look much cuter than your typical guillotine victims. In the end Katy Hackney's work is probably the most conceptually adventurous in the show, despite her conservative choice of materials. Hackney chopped up an ordinary, contemporary chess set and reglued the pieces into crooked conglomerations of black and white, pawns and bishops, kings, queens, and who knows what. If the forms weren't so abstract and the colors so basic, they might look like something Dr. Frankenstein put together. Instead, they come off as thoughtful subversions of the roles and symbols associated with this time-honored and intensely intellectual game. Tues.-Sat., noon-6 p.m.; Sun., noon-4 p.m., 508 Hayes, S.F. (415) 626-7478. (Lindsey Westbrook)