Marinaro is pleased to present Present Portal, Anneke Eussen’s first exhibition with the gallery and debut solo show in New York.

For the exhibition Eussen presents two series of works. Glass sculptures, created using found antique glass from numerous sources, including buildings and automobiles, are mounted in Plexiglas boxes and hung on the walls. Juxtaposing the ethereal glass works are hanging marble slabs assembled from reclaimed materials from building sites. Typically these materials would be discarded when their original uses have ended—a car no longer runs, a window has been broken, or a marble counter top has cracked. In Eussen’s hands, they are the starting point for her meticulously assembled wall sculptures.

Eussen overlaps and layers different tones of colors of glass to create nuanced compositions that play with shape, color and transparency. She does not manipulate the materials from the shapes they have been found in, but works within their original framework to assemble the pieces of the sculpture. She keeps the raw and broken edges of the marble and reassembles the pieces to create a new continuous line. From a distance, the resulting sculptures look like one piece of stone.

The glass works show remnants of their past—outlines of where a sticker would have been attached, faint residues and small nicks. The marble has uneven edges, evidence of breaks. The history of these materials is not entirely decipherable; their exact origin is unknown. Their historical lineage is open ended, the viewer questions their original function. Who looked through this glass? Whose face reflected in its surface? Whose hands touched a veined marble surface? The works emanate a tangible quality of humanity, as their previous functions allude to human contact.

Eussen’s works have many art historical precedents from Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made sculptures to the Arte Povera artists’ usage of typically throwaway materials. Eussen adds a formalism to the work of these predecessors, showing the glass assemblages in clean edged boxes and fastidiously placing the marble on the wall with geometric vertical black wire holds. The resulting works are elegant sculptures that vacillate between a modernist aesthetic and an unconventional materiality.