Tran Tuan Biography
25 October 1961, Vietnam
Tran Tuan is an established Vietnamese painter whose paintings have found their way into the hands of private collectors in Europe, Asia and America.
Minimal and often viewed as being simplistic, Tuan's work is enriched by his use of vivid colors and generous layering techniques. The results are incredible dreamlike images that give the viewer a glimpse into Tuan's innermost thoughts.
Tuan graduated from the Fine Art University in Hanoi and has exhibited his art in Vietnam, France and New York.
All of Tran Tuan's artworks are in the personal Studio-Gallery:
"trantuan Studio"
Tel: (84 4) 39 380 401
Mobile phone: 84 912 107 987
Email: info@trantuanstudio.com
Website: www.trantuanstudio.com
Selected Exhibitions
2011 - 6th Solo Exhibition at Vietnam Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi.
2010 - "National Fine Arts Exhibition" 2008 - Opening of personal Studio-Gallery "trantuan Studio" at 91-Hang Bong street-Hanoi-Vietnam
2007 - 5th Solo Exhibition at Viet Art center in Hanoi. - PicassoMio
2006 - 4th Solo Exhibition at Vietnam Fine Art Museum in Hanoi. - Display art works in Gallery Vietnam in New York.
2005 - Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi. -National Exhibition of Fine Art in Hanoi.
2003 -Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi.
2002 -Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi. - Group Exhibition at Artitude Gallery- Paris- France
2001 - Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi.
2000 - Individual Exhibition at HongHac Gallery- HoChiMinh city -Portrait Exhibition at Mai Gallery- Hanoi.
1998 - Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi.
1997 - Portrait Exhibition at Trang An Gallery- Hanoi - Contemporary Art of Vietnam at Trang An Gallery- Hanoi. - Solo Exhibition"One journey of Painting" at 29 Hang Bai Street-Hanoi.
1996 - Exhibition at Gallery 16 Ngo Quyen Street-Hanoi.
1995 - Exhibition at Song Hong Gallery
1994 - Exhibition at Gallery of the Fine Art Association- Ho Chi Minh city. - Exhibition at Gallery16 Ngo Quyen Street- Hanoi - Exhibition of the Fine Art Association of Vietnam in Hanoi. - Encouragement Award for Painting of Fine Art Association of Vietnam.
1993 - Exhibition at Gallery 29 Hang Bai Street- Hanoi. - Exhibition for young Artist of France and Vietnam II.
1992 - Exhibition in Alliance Francaise- Hanoi. - Exhibition for young Artist of France and Vietnam I. - All the Rivers are running at Trang An Gallery- Hanoi
1990 - Portrait Exhibition in 7 Hang Khay Street- Hanoi. - National Exhibition of Fine Art in Hanoi.
1987 - Young Artist Exhibition of Vietnam II.
1984 - Young Artist Exhibition of Vietnam I.
The Human World - Changing or Unchanged?
(6th exhibition "The world" by artist Tran Tuan at Vietnam Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi at December, 2011).
Sea-beaches turning into mulberry fields and valleys turning into hill,s both these two phrases allude to drastic changes of Nature and the vissicitudes of human life, and the former also implies wretchedness and desolation. A human life is only an infinitesimal limited atom in the infinity of time, yet could contain in itself “sea-beach into mulberry field” changes, even “seas of woes”. Man is nothing more than an insignificant incidental grain of dust in the cosmos. Yet, he always looks up at the heaven, addressing to it such questions without answer as put by Gauguin: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Nhân Gian (The Human World) – this solo exhibition of Trần Tuấn reveals his obsessive ambition of “great narrative”. The human world is cramped full with no vista except for a pitch-dark abysmal sea crevice, a nebula of cosmic dust, an atomic mushroom and a stellar flash. Clustered side by side are magnified human faces like huge statues you could only snap or look up to from below. The series begins with a groping hand blindly pointing to nobody knows where, and ends up with a child’s smiling face. In between is an endless close sucession of disbeliefs, sufferings, fears, unjustices… confronted with faces of pontiffs, philosophers, celebrities, millionnaires, devils and the author himself. These subjects are aching for the answers to the eternal questions, (A pity that the series cannot be displayed in full). Scrambling with them are this world’s living creatures, those mortals, merely represented by children’s angelic, innocent, chaste visages, which, who knows?, might thereby reflect veraciously the realities of this world. A human life, after all, amounts to no more than that. The world is changing and at the same time remains unchanged. Is this the “ages-old sorrow” grossly magnified or a pathetic scream in the hope to awaken people’s minds? Trần Tuấn is an aesthetic-minded artist infatuated with the beauty of “little narrative” – children, villages and hamlets, lotus ponds, flower beds, obsessive belles… This world of his is often romanticized. He jealously cherishes every brush stroke, every patch of colour, every detail on the oil painting surface. For more than twenty years now, his art has steadiky evolved in unremitting creation. This time, his works may strike somebody as quite different both in leitmotiv and style, at least superficially. But this change does not surprise those who have known the artist wfor a long time. In 1981, with his painting Where to Go? he expressed his indignant sympathy for the fate of Cambodian women under the Pol Pot genocidal regime. In 1984, he submitted to the First National Exhibition of Young Artists the triptych Vissicitudes of Life inspired by the ups and downs in politics, wars, violence, despotism… And now, the entangled roots of painful philosophic-aesthetic meditations so far hidden under the light friendly green foliage, bluntly show their shocking enormous, rough, oppressive deformities to the viewers, leaving them with no opportunity to elude the soul-racking questions. Of course, under the inescapable influence of comtemporary aesthetics! NGUYỄN QUÂN-Art critic