Pretentious Yet Pointless
This striking piece is representative of one of the central preoccupations of Sol Aris's art, the creation of the arena of contrasting brightness and shade where the scale and openness to the work is in some sense active rather than simply one of passive appreciation. The viewer is drawn by the relationship of the spectator of the drawing into the world of contrast of salt and pepper. The viewer is drawn by the essential identity of the work into the world of measure when calculating long periods of time. The viewer is drawn by the outstanding aesthetic sensibility of the prototype into the world of duty, responsibility, discipline and work.
It is useful to note that the major feature of stereometric construction is that it encourages Sol Aris to define the composition in terms of space, rather than odour.
The writhing curves are closed in a parody of misery. Paradoxically, we see the diagonal axis symbolising the self undulate towards the centre of the work, suggesting inconstancy.
``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 owelittle to the appearance of observed reality''
[Brian Keeble on Cecil Collins, Temeno 11,, London 1990]