Tran integrates performance in many of his artwork in various form. His practice explores the ways chance and coincidence influence daily life. He often removes himself from his art and inserts art into public life. Tran’s work often involve personal investment and occasional voyeuristic cruelty. The performative quality of such work signal his ongoing interest in social interactions both as subject and medium.
Photography
The photography series Fruit Tree is a collaboration between Ron Tran and Mathew Sawyer. Without a clear purpose in mind or the intention to travel in the most efficient manner, the two artist went on a short road trip exposing themselves to random opportunities that comes in their way. The work consists of performative actions and subtle interventions that were conducted resulting in the form of photo documentation.
Performance
Tran integrates performance in many of his artwork. His practice explores the ways chance and coincidence influence daily life. He often removes himself from his art and inserts art into public life. Apartment #201 is a piece Tran created for “Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, but Not Simpler”, an exhibition focusing on minimalist and conceptualist strategies by young artists. Tran removes his apartment door and displays it in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. Apartment #201 takes place both in the gallery and in Tran’s apartment where his private life is suddenly exposed and thus vulnerable. Property was stolen during the happening of this piece. During the sixth Berlin Biennale in 2010, Tran relocated several part benches previously situated on the opposite side of the Oranienplatz in Berlin, Germany, into closer proximity across the square’s main path. Used most commonly by the area’s large Turkish population and with strict gender division. the newly conversational distance incited a rage of new uses. Tran’s re-positioning transforms bench into auratic object of its prior uses while creating new, although temporary, situation. It Knows Not What It Is by Ron Tran is a collaborative installation by a collective of 11 artists and writers, including Angus Ferguson, Angus Ferguson, Pietro Sammarco, Kevin Chong, Erica Stocking, and Paul Kajander. In this work, Tran invited the group of artists to create artworks based on the stick’s form and to be mounted along with Tran’s. Here, each artist remain anonymous as if they are Tran’s silent objects, being placed in a place of collective worship.
Awards
In 2012, Ron Tran was named recipients of the $12,000 2012 VIVA Awards, granted annually by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation. In 2015, Ron Tran was named emerging artist in visual arts in the 2015 Mayor’s Arts Awards.
Special Collection: Acquisitions and Archives, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, 2013, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
