BEYOND SURFACE and INTO?

As my brother mentioned in a recent blog post,  "... all art is essentially about memory,  a pointed tug at what inhabits the liminal spaces of our now dreamt pasts".  He continues "Perhaps this work offers a key to those dreams,  a faintly recognized fragment that bridges a gap between us and ghosts".  What he suggests here is that the way of really seeing art in a meaningful way must include an intensely personal (read:  cultural,  emotional,  intellectual references) re-structuring process that could and should produce ambiguity,  disorientation, and even discomfort. The word "liminality" comes from the greek for "middle",  as in process,  journey, or travel.  In other words,  art that can be described with a superficiality is probably not art at all.  Art must include ideas about identity,  time,  and even community,  as those are the connecting tissues of the myriad  meanings that have very little to do with  pretty pictures of a sunset or a dog,  which at this point in our cultural hypnosis is what most people think of as art. That is the monoculture at work,  governed by what I would term the "liminal lie-box",  the pervasive technology that does little to progress our ideas of self beyond a splintered superficial text.