"FUSION: Glass and Bronze"
Kouros Gallery, New York City, May 3-31, 2012

The strongest pieces in sculptor Marianne Weil's recent exhibition at Kouros Gallery were a series of  primitive and industrial works in which the artist choreographed a provocative, visceral, and sometimes violent interplay of glass and bronze. In Mindful (2011), among the exhibition's most dynamic pieces, glass oozes out of a cast bronze form; the textured bronze evokes a restrictive screen or fence. From an opening on the top of the piece, a smaller glass bubble attempts to protrude from the cranial form

.... The exquisite and elegant Abbraccio (2011) swells with movement; it showcases bronze as a protective rather than a restrictive material. A  swatch of scored and bumpy bronze embraces an amorphous speckled glass form; depressions in the glass suggest fingerprints and emphasize the artist's hand in sculpting and fusing the two materials. Twist (2010), in which multicolored glass seeps out from a twisted bronze grate, is similarly animated; one can see the artist's hand coiling the form. (Weil uses sand, copper, and powder pigments to etch her works.) These works reflect a less turbulent approach to putting glass and bronze together and avoid the overt dominance of the bronze form, giving the glass a great expressive dimension.

Sculptor Marianne Weil Opens Her Studio

August 12, 2012 by Jenn Kennedy for the Huff Post - Gay Voices

Life experiences invariably shape artists' visions and affect where they go next. For sculptor Marianne Weil, visiting Stonehenge as a child planted a seed of curiosity that would grow into a deep connection to archeology, and specifically to prehistoric constructs. She says, "Because we are talking 5,000 years ago, there was no written history. We know only that these buildings were constructed for ceremony -- perhaps marking the seasons." 

Kouros Gallery Exhibition

May 3-31, 2012

Catalogue essay by John Goodrich
Fusion: Glass and Bronze

When sculptors incorporate glass into their work, they usually exploit its conventional properties as a transparent, planar barrier. Consider the work of Larry Bell or Christopher Wilmarth, or Duchamp’s iconic The Large Glass. Over the past couple years, though, Marianne Weil has found in glass a natural extension of her own exuberant, organic explorations in bronze. Her latest work exploits, in vividly tactile fashion, glass’ other conventional use, as a vessel.