by
George A. Magalios

Surface versus Ground: the battle between the sign and that which is signified. This contest encmpasses good and evil, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, environmentalist and gun lobyist and all of the central epistemological dichotomies of our time. The latter half of the twentieth century was the beginning of the spectre of the sign, of the simulacrum of the real into hyperreality, in Baudrillard’s words.

For Art, the surface prevailed over the ground with the rise of pop art, in general and Andy Warhol in specific. The devolution of art into a visual language of signs, of the marketplace, coupled with the rise of cynical irony as the definitive contemporary conditon, turned the notion of truth inside out. This was the end of the beautiful and transcendental in favor of the vulgar and the immediate inmpulse of the mediasphere. Today, with the likes of the second order Warhol surface artists such as Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst, we see the outer limits of the surface at work. Indeed, many may argue that, in politics, economics, contemporary art, and any, or all, spheres of power, the sufrace is all that exists, at least in appearance. But they would be wrong because the ground never goes away. No matter how much art and politics, philosophy and the mediasophere live by the sign, the real presences from concealment as a reminder of our relationship to materiality, to nature, to the ground. Global warming, recurring “natural” disasters in the United States, China, and Myanmar are but reminders of the power of the ground. What could be a more tragic and appropriate symbol of this contest than the cataclysmic earthquakes in China in the Spring of 2008? The ground swallowing up the innocent and the shabby structures of the corrupt and short-sighted Chinese government, is the perfect metaphor for the revenge of the ground over surface: China, the new future world power, the new surging economy humbled and brought to its knees by its angry citizens mourning the loss of their children, parents, brothers, sisters, friends and other family members. The ground and the surface: Two heavyweights in a game.