Maureen Cummins: Piece Work
By Fred Camper
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Choosing compelling cases revealing a history of bad laws and court decisions, Cummins produces a fascinating labyrinth of injustice. Mounting the court documents sideways and the superimposed texts at right angles to them, the artist suggests two viewpoints on justice, hers and the court’s. And the piece has a curious elegance: the grid also includes blank colored pages that Cummins found folded together with the documents. Yet these dryly official pages are hardly pretty enough to seem decorative.
Cummins, who lives in New York City, says in her statement that a book’s “use of time, pacing and drama, its intimate relationship to the human body,” has long fascinated her; she describes four of her pieces here as artist’s books. But even Crime vs. Punishment and Crazy Quilt resemble books: one is encouraged to thread one’s way through, perhaps rereading one passage or another.
It’s impossible to know Scott’s intent, though speculating can be interesting. Most of the shapes here are nonrepresentational, but a few resemble human figures; indeed, MacGregor suggests that Scott regarded some sculptures as her babies, and Joyce thinks that one early piece showing two figures together represented the two sisters. In all but a few cases, Scott covers the core objects so completely that their identity cannot even be guessed.
