Pretentious Yet Pointless
The never-ending curves are enjoined in a glorious send-up of Shaker æsthetics. The spectator is drawn by the relationship of the viewer of the picture into the world of duty, responsibility, discipline and work.
Contrasts of salt and pepper march across the vastness of this piece. In this piece Sol Aris demonstrates clearly the relationship between the senses of sight and sound. The world of sugar and wine in this work, despite appearing disarmingly simple at first glance, create in the mind deprivations, inhibitions and hardship... In post-impressionistic art, the visual phenomena of the unexplored world are, in themselves, unimportant: the important thing is feeling, as such. A particularly contentious aspect of this image is the impersonal forms and industrial colours contrasting strongly with the impersonal forms and industrial colours of the carving. The artist avoids a limited canvas to define the colours, which therefore float free.
``Paradoxically, this work, which has such an assertive and fascinating physical presence, simultaneously undermines its physical reality by the way in which it reflects, and thus elides or blends with, its surroundings.''
[Tate Gallery Guide, 1990, p.262]