In the meticulous, time-honored practice of Vietnamese lacquer art, artist Long Tran has found a brilliant mirror for the human psyche. Seamlessly blending traditional techniques with semi-abstract natural forms, his rapidly evolving portfolio represents a profound, tactile meditation on personal origin, cultural inheritance, and identity.
Born in 1992, Tran Viet Long, known professionally as Long Tran, approaches his craft not merely as a visual exercise, but as a deliberate philosophical inquiry. After graduating from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts in 2016 with a specialized focus on lacquer, he has dedicated his creative career to modernizing and pushing the psychological boundaries of this famously demanding medium.
Rather than striving for literal representation, Long operates masterfully within the realm of the semi-abstract. He borrows sweeping, elemental imagery from the natural world, like forests, rivers, and sunsets, utilizing them as visual metaphors to depict the kinetic, often turbulent movements of the human mind. For Long, the painstaking, heavily layered process of traditional Vietnamese lacquer is an act of intense self-interrogation. It is a continuous, physical practice that allows him to endlessly question his own origins and the nature of his emergence into the world.
A journey through Long’s portfolio reveals a visionary artist constantly expanding his conceptual and visual vocabulary. His color palette frequently explodes with luminous golds, deep greens, and arresting crimsons, capturing natural landscapes in a perpetual state of flux.
His 2021 artwork "Flow" served as an elegant, early indicator of his distinct semi-abstract aesthetic. By 2022, he had significantly scaled up his ambition with highly immersive, large-format works like the striking 92×184cm "Deep Forest" and the deeply evocative "Red Sunset". This creative progression surged into 2024, a year defined by powerful environmental forces captured in sweeping creations such as "Golden Rain," the monumental "Light Streaks," and his highly dynamic "Wave" series.
Long Tran’s meticulous aesthetic has firmly cemented his status as a vital, rising force in Vietnam’s contemporary art scene. Over the past decade, he has carefully built a formidable exhibition history, beginning with the BIENNALE Young Artist IV in 2017 and progressing to frequent, highly anticipated showcases at the prestigious Saigon Lacquer exhibitions in 2023 and 2024. He is also a foundational, driving member of the "CHUNG" group, prominently featuring in their successive exhibitions from CHUNG 1 in 2022 through to CHUNG 3+1 in 2025.
The year 2025 marked a definitive, triumphant turning point for his career trajectory. Beyond expanding his international presence by debuting at the ASYAAF & Hidden Artist exhibition in South Korea, Long achieved premier industry recognition by securing the prestigious Gold Prize in the Emerging Artist category at the UOB Painting of the Year 2025. Through his masterful, ongoing reinvention of a heritage craft, Long Tran continues to prove that traditional lacquer remains an incredibly potent vehicle for modern storytelling.