Nhat Tran – Urushi Art

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RECENT EVENTS

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Born from the two faces of a same plaster mold that has been removed, Experiment in Verification and Falsification is a double urushi kanshitsu work that evokes the obverse and reverse of any process of inquiry. In this process, verification of what can be trusted as real is at the same time a falsification of what fails the experimental test. Truth is at once simple and complex, while falsity is only an imitation of the truth: it looks like it, sometimes very much so, and only a sustained, honest inquiry can tell the difference. This artwork evokes the difference while not denying the similarity.  

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4 June to 24 July 2011. Four of my paintings were exhibited at the Asian Arts & Artists Exhibition at the Garfield Park Art Center in Indianapolis. Only one of them was a Vietnamese lacquer painting (titled Fall Face, 2000). The other three were mixed media: All the Wonders of You (oil + pastel, 2001), Caresse-moi tendrement partout (oil + wax, 2001), and Against the Flow (oil + wax, 2001).

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15 April to 5 June 2011. Five of my recent works are part of (shout!), the exhibition organized by the Arts Council of Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Arts Center that serves as a retrospective of the works produced by the recipients of the 2009–2010 Creative Renewal Arts Fellowships. The opening reception took place at 6:00 p.m. on April 15.

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Summer 2010. Having returned from my long research trip to the Tokyo University of the Arts, I am currently busy making new plans, which includes applying for two marvelous public art commission opportunities, preparing an upcoming exhibition at the Hubei Museum of Art in China, and preparing a presentation about my experience in Japan:  the new techniques I have learned, and what it was like to work with the great Japanese masters and the instructors and students in the program.

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10 April to 18 July 2010

Guest Researcher at the Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai)

A rare and wonderful opportunity was offered to me! The Department of Crafts at the Tokyo University of the Arts invited me to spend a good three months as a guest researcher so that I could learn Japanese urushi techniques under the mentorship of Professors Arisumi MITAMURA and Norihiko OGURA, both internationally recognized masters of urushi art. This was a dream come true! I learned a very great deal about urushi directly from the very best specialists. The trip was full of challenges, but very rewarding in every respect. Before leaving, I had been learning the Japanese language thanks to a wonderful teacher, Black Sensei, who directs Kanji Camp in Carmel.

At the end of May, I accompanied Professors Mitamura and Ogura and their colleagues for a brief trip to China. We attended “Walking from the Age of Hemudu,” the Third International Exhibition of Chi Art and Academy Conference co-sponsored by the Fujian Art Museum and the Fujian Art and Craft Society, which took place from May 28 to June 8, 2010, at the Fujian Art Museum in the city of Fuzhou. One of my 2010 works, Dance Away, Emotion, was exhibited there as well thanks to the encouragement of my Japanese professors!

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9 September to 1 October 2009

TRIP  TO  JAPAN

Thanks to the Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship I have received from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, I spent three weeks in Tokyo and other Japanese cities where I met many fantastic people: highly reputed professors of urushi at the University of Tokyo and renowned urushi artists who have all accepted to receive me, show me their artwork, and discuss their techniques. It was such an honor and privilege to talk to them. This was a wonderful journey of discovery, which made me expand my knowledge and my circle of Japanese artists-friends. I was accompanied by my very good friend Barbara Ford, who's Research Curator of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

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