Kukuli Velarde at Garth Clark

Garth Clark's penultimate show (the gallery, which opened in Los Angeles in 1981 and subsequently moved to New York, closed in August) featured Kukuli Velarde with a wickedly funny exhibition of ceramics and paintings that scored feminist and cross-cultural points. It was titled "Plunder Me, Baby." Velarde, born in Peru, a graduate of Hunter College now living in Philadelphia, took on ethnographic objects with a display of 12 faux pre-Columbian pots (all 2007) mounted on three shelves, complete with aged-looking, tattered and stained labels; she also addressed Christian iconography with two large paintings (both 2006) on metal panels.

Best known as a figurative sculptor in clay, Velarde has previously dealt with themes drawn from her cultural legacy. Often she used a stylized infant or child figure. But something seems to have gotten her dander up, because here her female faces, busts, torsos or full figures are directly related to pot forms, and they grimace and flaunt their sexuality. The labels give each pot-woman a title and describe her personality and appetites, but while the tempers are strikingly different, they might all be the same woman. The vessels are made of black, white, red or brown clays or terra-cotta, with paints, stains and glazes; some are brilliantly colored, others intensely patterned (both geometric and floral). There is a 17-inch-tall black stirrup pot with incised designs plus a face consisting of furiously bulging eyes and gritted teeth. The label says "India Pacharaca ... Taciturn, abruptly violent. Enjoys rough handling...." Another is a rotund storage vessel 29 1/2 inches tall that captures a figure down to hip level. Shown in relief, her arms are snaky, her breasts jut as aggressively as Madonna's bustier and her labia are prominently centered and protruding. The label says "Chuncha Cretina ... Never know what she is thinking. Savage, simple, lascivious, muy caliente...." Other figures look passive, sassy, alarmed or stern.

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Amazingly, Velarde paints with equal success and insouciance. On aluminum is a floral-bordered scene of an angel wearing a feathered hat and exaggerated conquistador balloon sleeves, who holds in his right hand a bloody sword and in his left the detached head of a kneeling female nude whose own hands still pray. Not the right prayer, maybe. The second painting, on steel, presents a pregnant nude woman in a chastity belt and minimally concealing green robe, whose gold-leafed ceramic heart, penetrated by nine large square-cut nails, protrudes from the surface. Her dolorous face, eyes rolled upward in supplication, a horse's bit in her mouth, is surrounded by three putti, one of whom holds a mask of her happy face, with a dazzling smile like a toothpaste ad. At her feet are two more putti, holding a banner that identifies her as "esposa, madre, servant, slave, marty[r]." All five putti have enormous penises, bringing to mind the "third leg" joke, but Betty-Boop-style faces and hair. The scene is garlanded with razor wire. This work should have been in one of the feminist shows. Velarde is a marvel.

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