Dancing for Myself 
---one day before the exhibition opening—

Martin Germann in conversation with Anh Trần

MG: Searching the Sky for Dreams was the title of an earlier portfolio you were sending me, but as a phrase it still seems to hover in your mind I think while looking over the checklist of this show… 

AT: Searching the Sky for Dreams is a project title which came when I was doing my MFA. So many people at the time were looking at net art, digital, post-internet art was popular at my art school. But I wasn’t doing that, I was a painter. This title is like trying to reconcile being a young artist back then, who would still make abstract painting. That wasn’t trendy, it would be cooler to make video works, like Hito Steyerl style, and conceptual installation. 

In this new show (at Galerie Fons Welters) I have used it as the title for two new paintings which look pretty much like each other - they have a similar composition, and I was working on both of them at the same time. I tried to mirror them but they turned out differently. They both have the same title Searching the Sky for Dreams.

MG: At some point in your life, you decided to go into painting – but what brought you into it? I see that you are combining various sorts of colors and techniques but also grounded in a multiplicity of historical references, especially towards the heroic Western Modernism? 

AT: At the beginning I started to paint landscapes during my undergraduate, and more often the landscape is of imaginative places from found photographs, they were never live. I had never been to these places in real life. When I got into my MFA, it turned into abstraction because I wanted change. The more I understand painting, the more I realize that there is a hierarchy in the critical art history. When discovering Abstract Expressionism, a sense of inspired yet resisting arose, so I tried to answer the question who has the right to abstract painting. Back then, perhaps what I was looking at was predominantly abstract expressionism, especially American postwar movement, and thinking how that might be in relation to our own Vietnam history from 1945-1975. The list of sucessful abstract painters seems to exclude non-Western artists, including myself. So I started trying to do what I imagined what they would be doing and figure out how to do the same myself. I was just curious what would be the result of that. 

MG: How do you make the works exactly – rather fast, or in long, exhaustive processes? I only saw them on screen by now, I am in Tokyo – you are in Amsterdam - but to me they appear very physical, impasto-landscape-ish, as well. 

AT: Normally I start with the paintings on the floor. I found that is the easiest way to prepare them. It doesn’t drip much even when I use very watery primer. I prefer them drying on the floor, lying flat horizontally. They are indeed physical, on the floor or on the wall, vertical or horizontal. 

It is interesting that some performers or dancers really like my works. They seem to recognize some movements in it, as if you dance. I also consider the painting process of my practice almost as a performance. Dancing in a way – just for myself, it is me alone in the studio with the paint, the canvases, and the brushes. You can say that the actual execution can happen rather fast. I can make a painting in one or two days. But finishing one can take up to months, because I tend to work on multiple canvases at a time. Before I start a new series there is normally a gap, it is called life (laughs) - there seems to be always a lot going on. It would take a while from the day I get the blank canvas from the factory to the day the painting is finished. In a nutshell, I can paint very quickly, but to start and to finish a painting takes a lot of work.

MG: Now that you mention it, are you good in finishing? 

AT: ….yes, it basically can only happen when I am in the same space with the work, so not much planning at all. I see my painting practice almost as a performance. I tend to feel more pressure, and there is a certain kind of attitude when the work is hanging already in the exhibition space.. Actually one of the works in this show I just finished yesterday in the gallery.

MG: Earlier you told me about the term “Provisional Painting”, which was coined by the writer Raphael Rubinstein in Art in America in 2012, in respect to painters such as Raoul De Keyser, Mary Heilman, or also Michael Krebber. Do you still see yourself in a line of these artists’ practices – and what would your specific addition be?

AT: That article is one of my starting points. I think these days my making has developed more layers. I would rather think that I am doing many provisional paintings in one painting - and then they become just a normal/non-provisional painting right…. [laughs] but the attitude towards the canvas has remained close, wherein I work gesturally, quite expressionistic, with quick brushstrokes and mark making, and so on. It’s a push and pull process, different signs of speed happening on the same surface, and also of making and thinking.

In a way, my practice of abstract painting can be said as a response to the Western canons, who make the kind of art that I’m inspired from, yet I feel frustrated by their geopolitical standpoints. I guess I started with a supposition of resistance. 

MG: I am sure that everyone needs something to work with or against. But how do you relate to pragmatism and adaptation, are you confronted with a lot of issues in terms of translating? In your life you also had to change the environment a couple of times.  

AT: Adaption is essential to me - I tried to adapt a lot and to learn new things. I often say I am not a painter. It was never my main goal. Painterly language is similar to the English language, I have to learn it every day. It is not my mother tongue. When I go back to Vietnam, I become a completely different person, another part of my identity. Same goes for the word painting, it has become part of me. I don’t have a studio at the moment – I hardly make any paintings. I’m not interested in making small works for practical reasons, I could do ceramic everyday, but I need a certain space for painting.

MG: You were studying tourism in New Zealand before you embarked into the fine arts - do you have a certain use of those studies?

AT: After one year I quit. It was so hard. I don’t know why I even chose it – I thought it would be easy to get a job. but there is a lot of management and business involved in the tourism industry. In fact, I can only use it for buying an airplane ticket, (laughs). I can remember the three-letter code of different airports. Once I also tried to name my works that way but quickly realized that it wasn’t a good idea. 

MG: You told me that you felt that you were considered as “Other” in New Zealand, which is of course a very heavy term which is not so fashionable to use anymore – but I think it still exists in this way or the other. What does that mean to you, is it a position which is even appropriate for to make art, today?

AT: No - I think it is there, although no one talks about it or says it to me directly. It is my subjective thought. Why? then it can be relevant. The same goes for the old question – who has the right to abstract painting. It is old fashioned. I think it is important to be aware of it. When I make paintings in the studio, I don’t think about these questions very much. I don’t tend to put any concrete political standpoint or position on the work overtly. I just think about being a good human first. Then I can afford a good position to make good paintings in. However, when I don’t paint I try to navigate my artistic direction for the coming future, by reconciling with these said questions, and reflecting on my previous works. Before or after a show, I have to reflect a lot upon what is there. My abstract paintings and my life being a painter is almost like two sides of the same coin, at some point they might intertwine, more specifically in the titles.

MG: The art historian Robert Storr once divided the abstraction in the 20th Century in referring to a grounded or an ungrounded world. Where would you situate your own practice here? 

AT: Perhaps this sounds black and white – for me it is more about the internal relationship between me and the work. The artist and the painting versus the outside world. I like to have a balance in between both worlds. When I physically paint, I am usually disconnected from the outside world. Maybe this disconnection becomes a sort of isolation sometimes. That’s why it is important to have a stable life outside the studio, to have friends and people I can meet and talk to. I think it is really important to have a community. That is the grounded part in the work, with which I can connect to. Back in the studio awaits me the battle I have to pick for myself, almost alone. I have to decide what I’m going to paint and how I am going to do that. What do I want to do, what does this work look like on this thing.
In regard to grounded or ungrounded – the artist essentially has to decide for themselves. I understand that it can be about where you are coming from and who is surrounding you. 

MG: As a last question: What does color mean for you? 

AT: Color for me means feelings, that is the most direct answer I can give, it can even be representation. As a painter I don’t like to participate in the conversation of figuration versus abstraction. My view on color also depends on the life-time period - this really effects the color palette. A lot of these new works use primary colors. There is a pink, the Venetian pink. It is a bit more yellow in Venice. On the painting it looks a bit more like baby pink. It’s like purity, this color. I don’t think any of the color in my work is realistic, and sometimes I push this barrier even further. Even surreal, un-real colors that don’t exist in real life. 

This large stroke of paint can resemble a river, it can be yellow or blue, it’s a metaphor. It might not be a real river, rather my yearning towards a landscape or a familiar space. The color for me is quite internal. I have no prediction, maybe I have a bit of control over how the audience and viewer sees the works, but everyone has a different experience with the light, which is of course because of their backgrounds. The main message here is that the color in my mind is not so unreal. It might leave room for the audience to imagine something as well. Maybe for them it is not a river but something else – whatever it is, I hope they could feel the warmth, and connection between their body and that specific place. I hope my work could also be able to connect you to another human being.

MG: A pleasure to talk to you. I wish you all a nice opening tomorrow!

Martin Germann is Adjunct Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. 

Biography
In her paintings, Anh Trần draws on the history of Western postwar painting, such as American Abstract Expressionism and German abstraction of the 1980s loosely associated with the Neue Wilde movement. Rather than mine the discursive, theoretical, or technical aspects of this history, the artist responds to the emotive quality of these works, which she has primarily engaged through reproductions in books. 
Trần is interested in liberating the expressive capacity of painting from formal and academic stricture and decentering art history to question the false dualisms of original and replica, center and periphery, authenticity and forgery. Further, Trần's work responds to Western modernism's appropriation of other aesthetic traditions that do not acknowledge their roots in vernacular cultural practices and customs. 

The artist draws from various painterly mark-making techniques, paint types, and treatments of canvas that are historically associated with white male painting, which come from the "desire to take what you cannot do or are supposedly not allowed to do and to use that energy in your own way". Often working spontaneously and on multiple paintings at once, Trần explores how these many styles and technical approaches can give form to everyday feelings, desires, and expressions worked out in the studio.[1] 

Anh Trần (1989, Bến Tre, VN) is an artist who lives and works between Auckland (NZ) and Amsterdam (NL). She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2021-2022). Trần received her Master of Fine Arts with first-class honours from Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland in 2016. She has exhibited at 8th Bienniale of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (BE), Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (NL); Artspace Aotearoa; Window gallery; St Paul gallery, Auckland and play_station gallery, Wellington (NZ). She will be participating at 58th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (US).

1. Ryan Inouye, Anh Trần in 'Is it morning for you yet? 58th Carnegie International', exhibition guide Carnegie Museum of Art, 2022.