Dead Warm

• Sat, Aug 8, 2020 - Sat, Sep 19, 2020  

Sawyer Yards and TANK Space Gallery present Dead Warm, a two-artist exhibition of recent small sculptures by Ling-Lin Ku and Ryan Crowley. In the form of a cabinet of curiosities window display, this collaboration engages the artist’s interest in the game of constant rearrangements of objects and how this process can reshape visual readings. 

Over the last year, Ku and Crowley have produced collections of found, fabricated, and modified objects to populate this display of studio flotsam and jetsam.  A stage platform built to the height of TANK’s picture window gives passersby the opportunity to see this stage of objects as one might view the ocean from a ship’s porthole.

Using a range of materials including plaster, ceramic, blown glass, 3D prints, and wood, Ku and Crowley make objects that embody both an off-kilter, slapstick physics and the gentle intentionality of a cat knocking a glass off the counter.

Many of the objects in Dead Warm relate to the physical body.  Band-aid lollipops, marled stone flip flop sandals, tiny clay octopus arms, and a lumbering plaster coil pot are a selection of objects suggesting an ergonomics spectrum from elegant to unwieldy.

Ling-Lin Ku is a Taiwan born, US-based artist currently living and working in Houston, TX. Her sculpture and installation work explores language play, the urban landscape, and daydreaming through digital data and tangible materials. Ling-lin received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019 and BFA from the University of Commonwealth University in 2016. She has exhibited her work nationwide, from New York, Texas, Virginia, California, to Vermont and Maine, and selected into artist residencies includes International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), Haystack Open Studio Residency, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico, Ox-Bow Fall Artist and Writers Residency, and ACRE Residency. She was one of the four recipients of Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts awarded by the American Austrian Foundation in 2019, and Houston Arcadia Fellow in 2020.

Ryan Crowley is a multi-media artist working with all matter of materials to make sculptures offering momentary visual pause and reflection on the narratives and oddities of every-day experience.  Crowley’s direct, blunt process and humble material choices yield objects that appear lost in time like ancient infants.  His work has been exhibited nationally including solo exhibitions at The Wayfarers, Brooklyn, NY, Anderson Gallery and Reference Gallery, Richmond VA.  Group exhibitions include Julius Caesar Gallery, Chicago, Hometown Gallery, Coustof Waxman, Brooklyn, New York, TSA Chicago, 4th Wall Project, Boston, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia and Mass Gallery and Pump Project in Austin, TX.  Crowley was the recipient of a 2014 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship grant. 

This exhibition is made possible by the generous funding and support from The City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, Department of Cultural Affairs Taipei City Government, and TXRX Labs.  

All exhibitions are free and open to the public Monday - Saturday 9 AM - 5 PM.

TANK Space - Spring Street Studios 
1824 Spring Street, Houston, TX 77007