Sol Hill
This Is Clearly Derivative Work, 2019
Photography, digital artifacts, japanese paper, acrylic on canvas
61 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm
' Sol Hill deals repeatedly with modes of human perception and consciousness. In each series, he considers how a mind, dependent on limited senses and ensconced in a particular body,...
" Sol Hill deals repeatedly with modes of human perception and consciousness. In each series, he considers how a mind, dependent on limited senses and ensconced in a particular body, can nevertheless apprehend a reality far beyond itself. The subjects themselves—mannequins, bridges, doorways, bridges, landscapes, ocean waves, passing people—often evoke the dilemma of what, in the contemporary world of sensory overload, to take into our awareness and what to leave out. Each Hill subject is reduced to its timeless formal essentials, each somewhat flecked and blurred as though by an expressive painter.
But this is not visual disruption so much as a suggestion of the aura-like energy that every physical entity—whether person or thing—continuously radiates. The artist, not surprisingly, has expressed admiration for British photographer Christopher Bucklow’s silhouette portraits of seemingly radiant individuals. Hill holds that modern physics and ancient Eastern spiritual belief concur on this point: that the universe, from the vast cosmic domain to the subatomic, consists almost entirely of empty space traversed by energy—a force that sometimes coagulates into the objects and beings we are able to crudely discern, even as we ourselves are part of that eternal flux.
These intimations invite us to consider what lies beyond the artist’s visually buzzing images, beyond all material phenomena, beyond sight itself. Hill refers to this wonderment—the ultimate goal of his art—as an experience of the sublime, a truth that transcends reason." - Richard Vine
But this is not visual disruption so much as a suggestion of the aura-like energy that every physical entity—whether person or thing—continuously radiates. The artist, not surprisingly, has expressed admiration for British photographer Christopher Bucklow’s silhouette portraits of seemingly radiant individuals. Hill holds that modern physics and ancient Eastern spiritual belief concur on this point: that the universe, from the vast cosmic domain to the subatomic, consists almost entirely of empty space traversed by energy—a force that sometimes coagulates into the objects and beings we are able to crudely discern, even as we ourselves are part of that eternal flux.
These intimations invite us to consider what lies beyond the artist’s visually buzzing images, beyond all material phenomena, beyond sight itself. Hill refers to this wonderment—the ultimate goal of his art—as an experience of the sublime, a truth that transcends reason." - Richard Vine