Artist Tran Trong Vu

Like his dissident writer father, Tran Dan, Vietnamese artist Tran Trong Vu casts a critical eye at Vietnam with his work. Born in Hanoi in 1964, the younger Tran paints anonymous Asians who smile and take pictures, oblivious of their distorted bodies breaking apart in the water that they wade in. As their Asian identity is diluted by the global culture, they do not even notice. At the Blue Memory show, which is showing at the Arizona State University Art Museum's Nelson Fine Arts Center through May 1, he uses plastic sheets as his canvas, and the figures wave over the background like a labyrinth of ghosts. The folk art influences, political undercurrent, and dreamy vibe make the show worth seeing.

GR: In Blue Memory, what do the people wading in water symbolize? Vietnamese water puppetry? Baptism?
TTV: Blue Memory is a work of memory, but there is not any link with the Vietnamese tradition. In this work you can distinguish two parts: Blue (which is visual) and Memory (which is intellectual). The whole Blue Memory makes an ambiguous situation in which the memory stays elusive. You cannot understand where it comes from, when it finishes, or whether it is sad, bad, or happy. The space is occupied by 60 sheets of painted transparent plastic featuring half-submerged figures wearing white-collar shirts and black ties, smiling and completely ignorant of their deformation and distortion in the water reflections. Water puppetry, a great distraction for foreign tourists, does not participate in my souvenir.

GR: I understand the plastic sheets that you paint on are common around Vietnam. Is that why you paint on them? TTV: There is no link between Vietnam and the transparent plastic. When the painted plastic is hung in the air, there are two ways to see the image: its support may be the transparency or what can be seen behind the work. When viewers move, the support moves, too. So you can say my painting has no support or, on the contrary, it has a moving and ambiguous one.
GR: What are some particular challenges of painting on plastic? TTV: Unlike most artists, I consider painting to be a means of work only. It is never an objective in itself. I paint on transparent plastic to insert images in space. Hung in the open air, the painting on the material becomes an illusion. In other words, my plastics give new life to space. It must to be read through the images, the words, and the signs left by the transparent plastics. Metamorphosed in many trompe lčoeil, the place is a game of hide-and-sick between the figures and the transparencies. To assign another function to painting: That is the objective of my current work. It's also a dream of plastics. GR: Your use of bold colors reminds me of political posters. Is that something referred to in your art? TTV: Many of my paintings are political posters. I use colors from the Vietnamese flag to provoke eyes and Vietnamese political slogans such as "Nothing is difficult" and "Never is more beautiful than today." When you are an artist, that you need all the trumps to express yourself, even the politics. Politics can be means of art.
GR: How is your art received in Vietnam? TTV: I have not had any occasions to show my latest works in Vietnam, but I believe the people would not be indifferent to the questions I tackle. GR: Do Asian viewers relate to your work best? TTV: I am not sure, but people from communist systems seem to feel an affinity toward my work. GR: As a resident of France, do you feel that you are freer to comment on Vietnamese culture there than if you were living in Vietnam? TTV: I have lived in two places, very far each from other: Vietnam and Europe. My current position allows me to see my country better from outside. The question is not if I am freer in France, but if I am freer inside or outside. If you always stay in your apartment you cannot know how it is.

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