Tam Van Tran Studio, 2016, Los Angeles, CA
(Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer)
Tam Van Tran (b. 1966 in Kon Tum, Vietnam) studied painting and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990 from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He later attended the Graduate Film and Television Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1996. In 2004, Tran was selected to exhibit in the Whitney Biennial.
Tran has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA; Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA; Long Beach City College Art Gallery, Long Beach, CA; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; and San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
His work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; Museum of Contemporary Art Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC.
His work may be found in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Broad Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and elsewhere.
The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
In Aikido Dream, his new solo exhibition at MCA Santa Barbara, the Los Angeles–based artist Tam Van Tran slips sideways through the gaps separating painting, drawing, and sculpture, using multiple procedures and unusual materials (chlorophyll and spirulina but also Wite-Out and staples) to create densely layered objects, some of them quite beautiful.
Please join us for the opening reception of Los Angeles-based media artist Tam Van Tran's solo exhibition, Aikido Dream. There will be an artist talk with Tam Van Tran and Michael DeLucia on Saturday, November 14, 2015 at 6 pm.
Beginning in November, 2015, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) presents a solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based mixed media artist Tam Van Tran.
The latest iteration of Bloom Projects, which will go on view the same day, debuts a newly commissioned site-specific installation by Brooklyn-based artist Michael DeLucia, whose work addresses the condition of sculpture and spatial relationships in the technological age.
An opening reception for both exhibits will be held from 6–8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015. They will be on view from Nov. 15, 2015 to Feb. 21, 2016.
The jungle is a magical one, dense with dangling vines and voluminous blossoms awash in green and gold glitter. The foliage sways in the breeze, casting glimmering shadows that dance on a nearby wall to the chorus of crickets chirping, leaves rustling and crows cawing.
LOS ANGELES — The Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) presents Paperworks, an exhibition that examines the range of work by fifteen contemporary artists with strong ties to Los Angeles who use paper as their primary medium. Their art comprises two- dimensional cut-outs and collages; free-standing sculptures; and large-scale installations that engage the architecture of the museum’s gallery space. Many of the works are created newly for this presentation. Paperworks, organized for the Craft & Folk Art Museum by independent curator Howard N. Fox, is on view from September 27, 2015 through January 3, 2016. An illustrated catalogue including texts on each artist will accompany the exhibition.
Tam Van Tran's solo exhibition, Breathing, is on view at Long Beach City College Art Gallery 3 September - 1 October 2015.
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Tam Van Tran. Exhibiting at the gallery for the fourth time, Tran’s latest works mark a departure from the obsessive process of earlier series. Embracing the collision of opposites - addition and subtraction, miniaturization and expansiveness, natural and manmade, tranquility and chaos - Tran continues past conversations with inspired force.
Throughout his career, each body of Tran’s work has abstractly reflected on moments in his own history. In this new series, Tran shares elements of his experience of dislocation and struggle connected to his crossing by boat from Vietnam to the United States at the age of nine years.
The Review Panel: An Evening of Critical Conversation About Art
Ellie Bronson, Jonathan Goodman and John Yau join moderator David Cohen to discuss Tam Van Tran, Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe; Shinique Smith, James Cohan Gallery; Ragnar Kjartansson, Luhring Augustine; and Bernard Frize, Pace Gallery. National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street, New York from 6:30 to 8:00 PM.
New York, New York - Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe is pleased to announce a solo booth of work by Tam Van Tran at The Art Show, organized by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) at the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York, from 6 - 10 March. Gala Preview on 5 March.
In "Leaves of Ore II," Tam Van Tran begins with fragments such as porcelain shards that evoke memories of ceramic jars his mother used in Vietnam to make fish sauce and copper sheets that lift with air currents like palm fronds in the California Santa Ana winds. The fragments include found objects, cardboard and palm leaves as well as natural materials, clay, paint and paper. The materials come together and embody Tran's recalled experiences of bombs floating onto shore, villagers fishing with grenades, and intermittent evacuations. Acutely aware of himself as a Vietnamese-American absorbing both Eastern and Western cultural influences, Tran is an artist who actively considers, explores, and expands painting concepts.
Pattern is currently being reinvigorated as a significant space for artistic innovation. Each artist presented here begins with some system or set of rules, whether mechanical, technological, digital, or other, and, through rigorous repetitive action, creates objects that are equally rigorous in their optical repetition. With this comes a critical redefinition of pattern: These artists explore iterative generation of form, using a framework more akin to a mathematical pattern or a computer pattern than to a purely visual process focused on decoration or ornamentation. Yet the resulting compositions are highly decorative, visually dynamic, and spectacularly patterned in the traditional sense of the term. Importantly, in these works the limitation of artistic choice implied by following a set of rules does not lead to a limited or stripped down final effect. Rather, the reliance on a circumscribed mechanism of production often results in a sense of potential endlessness that forces us to examine our preconceptions about the distance between reality and visual illusion. Regardless of the mode of making or the content within the form, each work in the exhibition asks us to reevaluate the way we see and experience the spaces we are in, the objects we confront, and the relationship between vision and perception.
New York, New York - Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe is pleased to announce its representation of Tam Van Tran. Tran’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery will open on 14 February 2013 and run through 16 March 2013.
