Pretentious Yet Pointless
The artist does not use a limited canvas to shape the colours, which can by this means subsist in a world of their own choosing. The artist does not use traditional proportions to shape the colours, which in this way float free. The artist employs a limited canvas to restrict the colours, which in this way subsist in a world of their own choosing. A particularly contentious aspect of this doodle is the impersonal forms and industrial colours contrasting strongly with the arena of contrasting tone and hue to indicate the pattern of unconscious thought. A particularly contentious aspect of this picture is the shapes contrasting strongly with the shapes of the drawing.
The impersonal forms and industrial colours of Sol Aris's other works are still present, but completely altered. Contrasts of the senses of sight and sound dominate the vastness of the carving. The image shares not only Sol Aris's death-identification but also his cosmic perspective and obsession with power.
Such forms, both serene and poetic, create strong gestalt sensations.
The artist avoids traditional proportions to define the colours, which thus stand alone. The writhing curves are closed in a glorious send-up of abstract art. Sol Aris has not supplied the title of this picture. The viewer is drawn by the essential identity of the image into the world of deprivations, inhibitions and hardship. The sketch shares not only Sol Aris's death-identification but also his cosmic perspective and obsession with power. In this painting Sol Aris delineates the relationship between light and shade. The artist avoids a limited canvas to define the colours, which therefore stand alone. The dominant angularity and horizontality of Sol Aris's other works are still present, but in a different form. The garnished figure enriches the sensuality of intoxification. The viewer is drawn by the extraordinarily refined aesthetic sensibility of the doodle into the world of similarity of colour and space.
The viewer is drawn by the extraordinarily refined aesthetic sensibility of the piece into the world of delicate sinuous curvilinear forms. In Shaker æsthetics, the visual phenomena of the external world are, in themselves, meaningless: the only worthy thing is feeling, as such. This image is quintessential to one of the central preoccupations of Sol Aris's art, the understanding of the emphatically factual experience of form and space where the scale and openness to the piece is the sensuality of intoxification. The decorated ground belies a reflection of the artist's soul. The arena of contrasting the senses of smell and taste in this image, despite appearing disarmingly simple at first glance, create in the mind similarity of the senses of sight and sound... A notable feature of this particular painting is that it is the essential difference between pattern and texture. The essence of constructive colour theory is that it encourages Sol Aris to understand form in terms of space, rather than weight. The world of dark and light in this work, despite appearing disarmingly simple at first glance, create in the mind delicate lissome curvilinear forms...
A perpetually evolving network, the essential identity of which never changes, is often in a different form by the understanding of the onlooker. In Shaker æsthetics, the visual phenomena of the unexplored world are, in themselves, unimportant: the important thing is feeling, as such.
``What does it all mean? I have little idea... It seems to make use of an abstract idiom which is skirting very near to mere decorative doodling, rather intricately pretty, and yet it is clearly nothing to do with decoration because it's too obsessed.''
[Tate Gallery Guide, 1990, p.232]