The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 37

transmutation takes place, the clay is lost in the heatinduced chemical process and, if high fired, soft, plastic
earth becomes hard, impermeable rock. The type of
ceramic that De Staebler works in, stoneware, therefore

Arthur Gonzalez, ‘59 Dodge Custom Royal, 1982.

has more than just a technical meaning in his art.
Isichapuitu (1997–2002), by this gifted, passionate,
His figures, cut into pieces or represented by a
disembodied part of a figure rather than the whole,
become human fossils, much like seashells that millions of
years ago were subjected to eons of heat and pressure,
thereby contained in a larger mass. The material identity
is lost, flesh in this case, but form becomes immortal. One
can imagine these sculptures being discovered in that
sedimentary layer known as the fossil record, chipped at

Peruvian-born artist. Its source is a Peruvian legend
from Cusco about a priest who was wildly in love
with a woman who died. In his despair he procured
a “vessel of death” to summon her spirit, and thereby
love her one more time. Dating back two thousand
years, these anthropomorphic vessels were considered
powerful tools in bringing back spirits from the past.
Manchaypuitu vessels were male and Isichapuitu, female.

by diligent geologists and paleontologists, pulled away and
revealed. Aside from the fact that man did not exist then,

Kukuli was at a point in her life where she wanted to

this gives De Staebler’s art its stamp of ancient profundity

summon her own spirits from the past. “But I didn‘t

as though nature, not man, were the true sculptor.

know how, until I saw a photograph of a Mexican statue

Arthur Gonzalez’s ’59 Dodge Custom Royal (1982) states
time and place very specifically. It suggests urban tribalism,
but remove the name and the work can drift back in time
to the celebrations of Papua New Guinea’s mud people.
Similarly, with Arnie Zimmerman’s The Fools’ Congress,
Part 2 (1998–1999) using terracotta diminishes identity
and time in this gathering of figures. Here humor flutters
briefly to life, again propelled by the title, but quickly
touches on the grotesque. The clown is one thing, often

from the Rockefeller Collection at the Metropolitan
Museum in New York,” she said. “The figure was two
thousand years old and represented an obese male
child with his arms up. Somebody made it two thousand
years ago, and yet I believed, it looks like me.” 1   
The resulting group of fifty Isichapuitu vessels is one of the
most important figurative installations in the medium.“ They
go on the floor because I want them invading our realm.
They go next to each other, because they were not created
to be observed and qualified as objects.” 2 Velarde said.

the smartest mind around, but the fool is a tragic condition
and often the source of mankind’s worst moments.
Kukuli Velarde’s figures Virgin Bride II (1998) and
Vergüenza (Shame) (1999) come from a major series,

1 Kukuli Velarde, “Isichapuitu 1997–2002,” Kukuli Velarde, accessed May 29, 2014,
http://www.kukulivelarde.com/site/Ceramic_Work/Pages/ISICHAPUITU.html
2 Ibid.

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