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Surface Vs Ground

The aim of Directional Forces is a holistic and multidisciplinary analysis of and meditation on the various cultural outputs that constitute contemporary art. These may include political examinations, reviews of exhibitions and essays on everything from a baseball game to a work of sculpture. 

The title “Directional Forces” refers to an installation by Joseph Beuys. 

The term “surface vs ground” is an attempt to articulate the tension and binary related to the tendency in contemporary thought and art towards irony, distance, and an obsession with the superficial; and the relationship such superficial observations have with the history of thinking and philosophy. As such “Surface vs Ground” is a foundational position that embraces the tension, the strife between the world of ideas and cultural output and the origin of thought, the history of being in all its possible utterances, in other words “earth.” 

Directional Forces was founded by George A. Magalios, an artist from Montreal. 

Directional Forces is comprised of an online journal with articles and reviews by artists and thinkers from across the cosmology of ideas; an annual book of highlights and artist projects; a lecture series; and a salon. 

The mission of Directional Forces is to create a world of ideas and learning where artists, academics, laypersons and those interested in cultural production in general may join to exchange their perspectives and learn new things. The Directional Forces logo is inspired by a cave painting at Lascaux.