Simon Preston is delighted to present The First Rebellion is History, Next Week Rome Falls , a group exhibition of new work by gallery artists that celebrates the gallery's four year anniversary.
 
The exhibition's title is borrowed from a recent series of photographs by Daniel Joseph Martinez. In each of his images, hand-groomed Bonsai trees, tended by the artist, are placed on pedestals in front of national flags, activating a rich set of connotations about nature, aesthetics and social control. Martinez will exhibit two further photographic series of works in his solo exhibition titled I want to go to Detroit; Cheerleaders CHEER at LA><ART which opens on 4 February, as part of Pacific Standard Time in LA. Michelle Lopez exhibits a pair of hand-formed clay, wall-leaning sculptures that examine the iconography of the flag. Following the previous trajectory of her work titled Flare, properties of drawing invade the sculptures and expose a kind of natural, organic form. Jessica Mein will show a series of billboard works depicting construction sites. Through the artist's obsessive hand-made perforations and collage, the mechanical printing process found in the discarded material is interrupted and altered. Marco Rios' Unititled photograph is hyperbolic in nature, employing humor and slapstick tactics to address the more solemn issues of failure, death, desire, and despair. Kara Tanaka has transformed a cowhide into an abstracted map by shaving and carving onto the skin, illustrating the search for both physical and mythical mountain systems. Tanaka's use of animal hides draws a parallel to the Tibetan iconographic image of flayed skin as a symbol for the destruction of the ego. Caragh Thuring

 
includes a volcano. Painted on unprimed linen, with an extreme efficiency of marks, the volcano appears mythical or simply dormant and elicits a certain faith and desire in its mere existence, echoing the very foundation and method in the construction of each of her paintings. Josh Tonsfeldt will exhibit recent work made while on residency at the Zabludowicz Collection in Sarvisalo, Finland. He is included in New York: Directions, Points of Interest at Massimo de Carlo , which will open on January 25th - March 24th in Milan.