Pretentious Yet Pointless
Contrasts of the senses of smell and touch emphasise the vastness of the work. The endless curves are enjoined in a glorious send-up of Shaker æsthetics. A deep underlying meaning of this image is the shapes contrasting strongly with the world of night and day of the carving. An important part of the carving is that it is the pattern of unconscious thought. The world of white wine and honey of Sol Aris's earlier works are clearly visible here, but entirely altered. Semiotically, we see the short vertical line representing power and authority curve back and forth, suggesting unreliability. A deep underlying meaning of this particular doodle is that it is the eternal dimension and its limitless possibilities. The impersonal forms and industrial colours in this work, despite appearing disarmingly simple at first glance, create in the mind images steeped in insight and emotion... A constantly changing evanescence, the scale and openness of which never changes, is always transformed by the understanding of the onlooker. In post-impressionistic art, the visual phenomena of the external world are, in themselves, unimportant: the important thing is feeling, as such. Such forms, quietly formal, create strong gestalt sensations. The artist does not use a rectangular grid to shape the colours, which can by this means float free. Semiotically, we see the diagonal axis symbolising the self curve back and forth, suggesting unreliability. In this sculpture Sol Aris delineates the relationship between salt and pepper.
``This art, facing forwards and inwards, is of images of expectation and spiritual progress that are freighted with no historical context at all and which owe little to the appearance of observed reality.'' [Brian Keeble, on Cecil Collins, Temeno 11, London, 1990, p.114]