11.26am, Galeria de Centro Cultural PUCP

For once I am writing while still in the presence of what I write about. I am at an exhibition of works by Peruvian artist Cristina Galvez. A good portion of her work is sculpture and drawings of animal- or form-faced human forms, skinny, with arms that taper off a quarter of the way down. Their armlessness and straight thinness is disturbing and the fantastical quality fo the characters I find very masculine. A series of ink drawings tell a story of a faceless king, and loop-faced queen. The king is murdered, there is a battle.

Other of Galvez's works are quite different and lovely: two ink or charcoal drawings of women with a cat; a beautiful sculpture of a hollow, slant-eyed and sad-looking tiger; a sculpture of a trapeze artist, a woman projecting herself back from a dangling triangle, hands gripping the bar, feet just above. It is all black and the woman is formed of wire-like long gobs of swirling metal.

A series of simple sketches in pen show Indian people - a snake charmer, female dancer, the back of a rickshaw - and there is a series of erotic orgy sketches titled 'joie de vivre'. I particularly like a sculpture of a sitting woman that is completely her metal drapery.

It is difficult to imagine that the same imagination produced these various works.