Josh Tonsfeld at Simon Preston Gallery

When his grandparents’ Missouri farmhouse burned, Josh Tonsfeld’s family salvaged some things and left the rest.  In a creative act of excavation, the New York based artist returned to remove more objects from the debris, including this book, ruined furniture and correspondence, which he arranges in the gallery in a kind of provocative but inconclusive personal archeology of a past American life.   (At Simon Preston Gallery through June 2nd).

Josh Tonsfeld, Untitled, book, 2013.

Daniel Joseph Martinez at Simon Preston Gallery

Daniel Joseph Martinez, A Story for Tomorrow in 4 Chapters, Dostoevsky Loved the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Muhammad Ali & Dandelions, Lick My Hunch!, archival pigment print with UV finishing coating, 2010-2012.
Daniel Joseph Martinez, A Story for Tomorrow in 4 Chapters, Dostoevsky Loved the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Muhammad Ali & Dandelions, Lick My Hunch!, archival pigment print with UV finishing coating, 2010-2012.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Daniel Joseph Martinez’s latest body of work at Simon Preston Gallery features a hunchbacked figure in a Pope’s mitre, praying on an Afghan prayer rug, and tattooed with ‘blasphemous inscriptions in Hebrew, Arabic and Latin’ (according to the gallery handout).   Is this social commentary or overkill?  (Through Dec 23rd.)