Early in her career, the British sculptor Cornelia Parker avoided the familiar associations of representational objects by creating purely abstract works. At a certain point, however, she began to reverse the process, achieving a form of abstraction instead by removing recognizable items from their fundamental usage or meanings.

For the Rorschach Series, Parker was inspired by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist who in the early twentieth century developed a technique of psychoanalysis utilizing inkblots. Ink was allowed to fall onto a piece of paper, which was then...