BLUE MEMORY
Paintings by Tran Trong Vu

BLUE MEMORY: PAINTINGS BY TRAN TRONG VU Traveling Exhibition / Installation Arizona State University Art Museum
Tran Trong Vu. Made in Vietnam, installation at Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York, 2001. The Arizona State University Art Museum is traveling an exhibition/installation of 100 paintings by contemporary Vietnamese artist, Tran Trong Vu. This exhibition will be Tran’s first in an American museum. Tran Trong Vu was born in Hanoi in 1964, the youngest son of Tran Dan, one of the best known dissident writers of the 1950s. Tran graduated first in his class at the Hanoi School of Fine Arts in 1987 and in 1989 won a scholarship to study painting at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Tran now lives and works in Paris. Tran’s striking paintings of schematic figures on suspended sheets of plastic explore what it means to be Asian and Vietnamese within the context of an increasingly westernized global culture. His paintings are peopled by androgynous Asian figures against a backdrop of the signs of a modernized Hanoi (like cameras, Western toilets and street signs). Generic Asian male and female figures are painted on life-size sheets of plastic; a material found everywhere in the streets of Hanoi. Suspended from the ceiling, the paintings fill the space and form a labyrinth through which the viewer must walk. The figures hold cameras to their faces or are framed by televisions, products associated with contemporary Asia. Sometimes they are surrounded by slogans that Tran has drawn from banners in Hanoi or by fragments of his father’s poetry. Tran’s work explores both the westernization of Vietnamese daily life and the way Vietnamese culture is viewed by the West. Tran’s work contrasts markedly with more sanctioned, romanticized paintings by Vietnamese artists. Available on request is a recent image from the artist’s Paris studio of three pieces for the exhibition. “Blue” in the exhibition title refers to the bottom half of all the paintings, where the figures are dissolving in water; “Memory” refers to histories that become distorted or transparent or difficult to remember.	Exhibition Information The Blue Memory exhibition includes: Approximately 100 paintings on plastic sheets 50 color catalogs (40 pages, essay by Dr. Nora Taylor, 20 color pages) text panels, labels (hard copy or disc) For more information, or for a more complete packet, contact Heather Lineberry or Susan Ables, ASU Art Museum, 480.965.2787. Rental Fee: $3,800 + shipping + artist fee and travel for installation Insurance: provided by the venue Availability: June 2004 – 2006 Security: Moderate Space Req: Variable, max of 2,500 sq. feet
	Curators: Dr. Nora Taylor Humanities Department Arizona State University Heather Sealy Lineberry Senior Curator ASU Art Museum   Tran Trong Vu. I Don't Know Why The Water is So Blue, 2003. Oil on canvas, 40 x 47 1/4".

Download a printable PDF version

For more information contact John Spiak at spiak@asu.edu. 

back to current exhibitions

ASU | Herberger College | ASU Art Museum | Internal Resources | Staff Directory