About Dan Tran

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Tran was born in Vietnam, and now lives in the United States. He worked as a bioengineer for many years. Upon leaving the tech world he returned to his first love, Art, and is basically self-taught. Depending on the subject his practice used the abstract and figurative style to explore our human condition.

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He first painted the figurative series Icons, a series of pop portraits  - with a twist - of world icons such as Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, the Dalai Lama, Jackson Pollock and Frida Kahlo.

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He followed with the series Legends & Myths in the pop/magical realism style, depicting today’s socio-political realities in his home country Vietnam through her myths and legends. The series was shown at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi, Vietnam under the sponsorship of UNESCO. A number of works were deemed subversive by the Vietnamese government, and consequently banned.

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Subsequently he switched to a more universal geometric abstract visual language to investigate the precariousness of the physical, emotional and spiritual world.Thus the series Socrates' Echoes and the following series Superposition  of Ambivalent States were born and are still in progress.

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In 2020, he responded to covid and extreme political turmoil with the series Lost & Found in the Time of INfection, examining through the eyes of extraterrestrial visitors burning issues of out time (climate change, criminal justice, threats to democracy, cult of violence) as well as hopeful manifestations of humanity (friendship, love, healing.)

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Most recently he is working on a project titled "Which Way to De-decolonization", advocating for the process of “decolonization from within”, often neglected by many formerly colonized peoples, through the more complex medium of multimedia installations (sculpture, video, music).