Michael Workman

Is that a baseball bat stuffed in a tube sock? A spoon with a rock in it? What the hell is that thing with the pajama-fabric rabbit ears? Why, it's Chicago artist Deva Maitland's sculpture, "My Parents Had Sex with Animals and all I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Through this and a host of humorously titled works, Maitland undertakes an exploration of Modernist pedestal sculpture's formal conventions, often combining readily found objects and materials to assemble humanoid figures. "Rainbow With Egg," for instance, resembles a human form mostly through what are clearly eye sockets settled low into the round orange blob of a head rising from a star-shaped collar and black-cloaked torso. But what to do with the paddle-tipped flagella rising from the skull? So mysterious. As mysterious as love? Yes! Just in time for Valentine's Day.

Deva Maitland shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago, (312)280-2660, through February 29.

(2004-02-03)

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