Crys Yin
Companion
September 3 - October 12, 2024

Deanna Evans Projects is pleased to present Companion, an exhibition featuring new works by Crys Yin. This marks her second solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from September 3 - October 12, 2024.

A search for insulation against harm, found perched atop a mountain of garbage in central Maine. The protector of this pile: a cement-filled dog statue, cartoonishly painted with exaggerated features measuring 2-feet 4-inches tall. Obediently it stands at attention, mimicking a soldier prepared to defend, steadfast despite all of its surroundings having been demolished. With its upright stature, the sculpture is reminiscent of the ancient Terracotta Army warriors fabricated for Emperor Qin Shi Huang, buried alongside him in 210 BCE for eternal protection. 

Guided by its fateful discovery and charmed by its undeniable energy, this salvaged guard dog became the impetus for Yin’s ceramic works in the years that followed. Driven by her own irrational yet fervent desire to protect those around her, Yin crafted from clay over 400 dog sculptures to serve as talismans. Each talisman deliberately handbuilt, and therefore unique in their subtle differences, still share a common apotropaic intention. Playfully titled Brutus, these small and delicate objects carry the enormous weight of Yin’s affections, accumulated through their formation over hundreds of hours. 

On the adjacent wall, The Memory of Things serves as a diaristic accompaniment to the sculptural dogs. Yin, less interested in preserving the specific dates in which each sculpture was created and more attuned to when friends would ask after her progress in the Brutus works, instead documented these moments. In employing the use of Chinese knotting (中國結), a historical method to archive important events through the tying of knots in ropes, the knots in this painting act as visual markers to when those significant asks and expressions of support took place.

The painting, Magnificent Life, Accented with Assorted Greenery, also witnesses a communal care. In a foggy monochrome, this work documents the aftermath of a delivery van once brimming with flower sprays. With its doors flung wide open, remnants of funeral arrangements spill into the street, pouring out from a well of others’ well wishes. It is through the cavernous cargo bay and the lingering floral imprints that the profound depth of care becomes visible.

These works come together to honor and extend companionship, in this life and perhaps into the after. 

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Crys Yin is an artist based in New York. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures tell stories of mis/connections and find contentment in the mundane. Through the distortion of scale and skewing of perspectives, along with a compulsive tendency towards repetition, she depicts worlds that exist just a smidgen off-kilter. Yin has exhibited at FLAG Art Foundation, the Chinese American Museum, Adam Baumgold Gallery, Fisher Parrish, amongst others. She has also participated in fellowships with the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, A.I.R., ProjectArt, Shandaken Paint School, The Lighthouse Works, ACRE, Ox-Bow and The Lower East Side Printshop. She was most recently a recipient of the NYFA 2024 New Work Grant.