- VIET TRAN PAPER COLLAGE

Tran's Collage Technique

(This section was written in reply to requests from viewers who wanted to know the process of how Tran's "looked-like-painting" collage is created).

Tran's collage process is very simple. He applies the same painting techniques as an oil/acrylic painter normally does. He starts with a sketch (in pencil). Then, he "paints" it over and over with tiny pieces of colours ripped directly from magazines. As a painter does with a painting, Tran keeps applying many layers of torn colours on a collage until he is happy with the piece or until he wrecks it and throws it away.

It is a very tricky and slow process which takes time, patience, and mind concentration. Finding the right pieces of colours from stacks of magazines for a collage is very challenging. It is important to emphasize that Tran's unique collage technique is an art of therapy. One may need to practice Zen or meditation to enjoy this creative process. He/she can find stillness, calmness, and peace after getting used to this type of slow process. The one who focuses too much on the outcomes will quit it because she/he does not enjoy participating in the creative process.

As Human-beings enjoy their living process, artists enjoy their creative process. While living process hits its dead end - the unavoidable death, the creative process ends up in many amazing artworks for viewers to enjoy for centuries.

“Five Elements” - a nude series of Tran’s 28 paper collages - was created in late 2006 and in 2007. The series was the artist’s experiment to define his own style of forms, colours, depth, lights, and movements in paper collages.

Media Review

Times-Colonist
1/ June 2008 - Go Art -Robert Amos - 2/ 1988 - On Art: Art is Where You Find It by Robert Amos. 3/ 1988 Torn Paper Art Reflected Refugee Heart by Holly Nathan
Monday Magazine - Art Therapy by Frank Nowosad.
Documentary film:
- One of three artists featured in the film “Art of Survivals”.
Art Comment: “I find your work to be extremely moving and powerful as well as very beautiful” by Astri Wright Author of Soul, Spirit, and Mountain: Preoccupations of Indonesian Painters, Kuala Lumpur, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Art Therapy

An art viewer may take a close look at Tran’s collages to detect movements, a chaotic world of colors, and shapes from messy layers of pieces of ripped magazines rebelliously fighting against each other. However, as the art viewer slowly steps backward about 10 feet away to have a “macro-look”, the collages gradually reveal its order, light, depth, energy, uniqueness, and beauty. The art viewer can change perspective and feeling through the artistic transformation of these collages by repeating the “zoom-in-and-out” process for a couple of times. Art viewers can find stillness and calmness within themselves through this process.