The sculptor Paul McCarthy's works are almost invariably unsettling (Mechanical Pig, 2005, is a fine case in point) and when he really gets going -- as in 1992's mechanized Cultural Gothic, with its innocent young boy humping a goat in a glade as his dad nods approvingly -- the work can, at times, verge on the downright repulsive. And yet somehow over the year's he's managed to keep us asking for more (which probably says more about us than about him).

For fans of McCarthy's sculptures and installations, most of which are, in fact, intensely visceral commentaries on and critiques of a plasticized, consumerist culture completely disconnected from the natural world, your prayers have been answered. On Monday, February 26, Christie's will be auctioning off several works from the personal collection of legendary Swiss art connoisseur Pierre Huber, including one piece of special note -- McCarthy's Bear and Rabbit on a Rock.

In Bear and Rabbit, McCarthy executes a tableau of an almost poetic perversity.

At first glance, it appears to mimic two stuffed animals placed by a child in a warm, friendly hug. But upon further inspection one realizes that the stuffed animals are doing more than just hugging.

As the Christie's catalog has it:

"In Bear and Rabbit on a Rock, the exultant rabbit throws its head back as if in sexual climax, while the leering bear -- presumably the source of this pleasure -- grins at its own prowess. Inherently absurd in its inter-species copulation, this sculpture stages that which is actively proscribed, and therefore revolting -- although the origin of such disgust is not so much the result of biological anomaly as it is of social conditioning against animalistic and literally non-productive impulses."

Perhaps. But the "biological anomaly" is creepy enough for us as it is.

Bear and Rabbit on a Rock is expected to fetch upwards of a million dollars.

-- NIA ELIZABETH SHEPHERD