Kouros Gallery presents Ad Fundum: Recent Bronze Sculpture, an exhibition by Marianna Weil. Weil’s latest series of bronze sculpture is inspired by her frequent visits to archaeological sites while in residence at the Casa de Mateus Foundation, in Portugal, 2008, and at the Kirsten Kjærs Museum in Denmark, 2009. In the current exhibition, her fourth one-person show at Kouros, she transforms thematic elements - architecture, botany, biology, and geology - with metaphorical imagery, integrating historical and contemporary perspectives.

Weil has been visiting prehistoric sites for more than ten years, studying the dolmens, standing stones, burial mounds and other remnants of ancient European life. Trained by artisans in the village where Michelangelo quarried and carved marble, she learned the ancient tradition of carving and casting bronzes over 25 years ago in Pietrasanta, Italy. While her work embodies the intuitive and the personal, she extends her cultural roots and individual memories by deploying visual detail from disciplines in the natural sciences.

Created directly in wax, Weil’s abstract bronze sculptures are then cast in bronze using the lost-wax process. Unlike most sculptors who cast their sculptures in multiples, Weil casts each sculpture from the original wax, and then finishes and patinates the sculpture in her studio.

Thematically, her sculptural choices lean toward ancient sources and resonate with her ongoing interest in ritualistic mystery, relationships with nature and penchant for female shapes. She emphasizes asymmetry over symmetry and modulation over strict adherence to geometric constructs. Her subtle patinas both soften and accentuate her pierced, gouged, scraped, and stamped surfaces. Overall configurations complimented by textural details result in a strong tactile appeal, engaging both hand and eye.

She has received numerous awards for her work, including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship; Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant; Hospitalfield Trust and Tyrone Guthrie Centre Fellowships; and a 2005-06 New York State Council for the Arts Community Connection Grant for a public art installation in cast bronze for Greenport, New York. Weil’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe for the past 25 years.