Tran Trong Vu is a Vietnamese Artist born in 1964, in Hanoi. He is the youngest son of the poet Trần Dần. He graduated at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts and won a scholarship at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He now lives and works in Paris. His work beyond aesthetics reflects the obsessionof a past that continues, the political and human derision. He has had solo and collective exhibitions at the ASU Art Museum (Arizona), the Singapore Art Museum (Singapore), the Youth Art Palace (Tashkent), Espace Ecureuil, The Foundation for Contemporary Art (Toulouse), Künstlerhäuser (Worpswede), Casula Powerhouse (Sydney), Stenersen Museum (Oslo), Stiftelsen 314, International Contemporary Art Foundation (Bergen), Exhibition Center of Baie-SaintPaul (Quebec), Galerie Mirchadani & Steinruecke (Bombay), Islip Art Museum (New York), Museum für Lackkunst (Münster), Espace Paul Ricard (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Modern Art Museum of Paris (Paris), Plum Blossoms Gallery (New York), Tobin Ohashi Gallery (Tokyo), Tropen Museim (Amsterdam), Watertoren (Vlissingen).His works are in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum, the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts and the ASU Art Museum. He was awarded the first price at the Austria Biennial 2006 and the prestigiousPollock-Krasner Grant in New York for the season 2011-2012.
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Champ Vu, by Tran Trong Vu. © Copyright Tran Trong Vu
Singapore Art Museum
Rainwater Even Though Salty is not Speechless
Born in Hanoi, Tran Trong Vu (b.1964) graduated from Hanoi University of Fine Arts in 1987. In 1989, Vu won a scholarship to study at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts de Paris. His breakthrough came when, in Europe, he was exposed to individualism in style, instead of the conformist art that he was taught to admire. Currently, Vu lives in France and his works have been exhibited in Europe and the United States.This triptych reveals Vu’s introspection of the Vietnamese society and its people. The text in this work is translated as follows:"Rainwater even though it is salty, it is not romantic."Rainwater even though it is salty, it is not speechless. Each panel suggests human suffering, and the monotony of everyday life hidden behind the half-smiles, point at the loss of identity and conformity brought about by an increasingly globalized environment.
