Tran Trong Vu, a French artist of Vietnamese origin, paints on large transparent plastic sheets and installs them in space and the painting becomes an illusion. His creations involve participation by the public or at least its consent to become part of a particular creation. The visitors look for their own path in transparency between images, figures and flowers and act as if they were on a stage.

One of the goals the artist gave himself is to breathe life into space by filling it with signs and symbols, illusions and metaphors. Tran created the installation presented at the ongoing Art Week in 2012 in Paris. It reflects and sums up the artist’s views, relying on ‘a little lie’ to approach the truth.

“It’s a landscape of flowers in three dimensions. Once inside this installation, the visitor sees silhouettes that seem to be moving. Their backs face the flowers and they appear to be avoiding the flowers as if trying to escape this landscape that looks absurd but poetic at the same time,” says Tran of his installation, which has drawn a multitude of curious visitors.

The son of the famous Vietnamese poet and novelist Tran Dan and an artist of high stature, Tran Trong Vu taught at the College of Fine Arts in Hanoi, which he had graduated from in 1987. He started working and living in Paris in 1990 after completing his studies at the National Fine Arts College of Paris. His creations have gone on display in many galleries across the world: in France, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. Tran Trong Vu was awarded a grant by the New York-based Pollock-Krasner Foundation.