0May 27
Liz Tran’s Solo Exhibition At Morton Fine Art: Abstract Artwork Inspired By Rorschach Test Explores Mental Health, Perception, And Subjectivity
Liz Tran, Ornament 7 (2016), 24 x 24 in, Mixed media on panel, Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art
Morton Fine Art’s most recent solo exhibition presents new mixed-media works by Seattle-based artist Liz Tran. Bringing together the visual arts and psychology, The Webs Installed by Our Dreams contemplates the relationship between abstraction and personal perception. The exhibition is inspired by early memories of the artist being administered the Rorschach test, a psychological evaluation of mental health and trauma through associative responses to inkblots. Through Tran’s imagination, these monochromatic inkblot prints are transformed into a world of vibrant, technicolor panels that explore the nature of viewer subjectivity.
Featuring work from her Mirror and Cosmic Circle series, Tran creates canvases with explosions of colorful dots, circles, blots, and splashes that accumulate on the panel and create a thickened impasto. Some symmetrical–like a Rorschach print–and others more liberally abstracted, Tran’s works challenge the notion of a correct way to view art. Like the well-known psychological test, Tran’s art performs an introspective function in which the viewer’s interpretation is self-reflexive and can facilitate self-knowledge.
Liz Tran, Cosmic Circle 2 (2020), 24 x 24 in, Mixed media on panel, Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art
“As I found myself delving into the history of my own mental health, I began to simultaneously study perception and subjectivity both in visual art and psychology,” said artist Liz Tran. “What do we bring to what we see? The viewer’s experience of my work is completely different than my own, yet that experience is equally valid. Is what we see simply a reflection of our self?”
Opening the door into a meditative and healing atmosphere, The Webs Installed by Our Dreams actively encourages personal interpretation and projections of meaning. Through a form of abstraction that combines precision and instinct, Tran’s joyful works imagine dreamlike surfaces to question the nature of abstraction and our responses to visual stimuli, whether that be art on the white walls of a gallery or observations of planets and stars circling overhead.
Morton Fine Art’s most recent solo exhibition presents new mixed-media works by Seattle-based artist Liz Tran. Bringing together the visual arts and psychology, The Webs Installed by Our Dreams contemplates the relationship between abstraction and personal perception. The exhibition is inspired by early memories of the artist being administered the Rorschach test, a psychological evaluation of mental health and trauma through associative responses to inkblots. Through Tran’s imagination, these monochromatic inkblot prints are transformed into a world of vibrant, technicolor panels that explore the nature of viewer subjectivity.
Featuring work from her Mirror and Cosmic Circle series, Tran creates canvases with explosions of colorful dots, circles, blots, and splashes that accumulate on the panel and create a thickened impasto. Some symmetrical–like a Rorschach print–and others more liberally abstracted, Tran’s works challenge the notion of a correct way to view art. Like the well-known psychological test, Tran’s art performs an introspective function in which the viewer’s interpretation is self-reflexive and can facilitate self-knowledge.
“As I found myself delving into the history of my own mental health, I began to simultaneously study perception and subjectivity both in visual art and psychology,” said artist Liz Tran. “What do we bring to what we see? The viewer’s experience of my work is completely different than my own, yet that experience is equally valid. Is what we see simply a reflection of our self?”
Opening the door into a meditative and healing atmosphere, The Webs Installed by Our Dreams actively encourages personal interpretation and projections of meaning. Through a form of abstraction that combines precision and instinct, Tran’s joyful works imagine dreamlike surfaces to question the nature of abstraction and our responses to visual stimuli, whether that be art on the white walls of a gallery or observations of planets and stars circling overhead.
Liz Tran Artist Biography
Channeling subjects such as dream imagery, imagined landscapes, geodes, outer space and The Big Bang, Tran explores the shapes of nature, with the infusion of fantastical, pulsing synthetic hues. Public collections of Tran’s work include the City of Seattle’s Portable Works Collection, Capital One, Vulcan Inc., Baer Art Center, Camac Art Centre, The El Paso Children’s Hospital, Harborview Medical Center, The King County Public Art Collection and The Child Center. Tran has completed multiple special projects and installations, including work for VH1Save the Music Foundation, The Upstream Music Fest, The Seattle Art Museum, The Brain Project Toronto, Public Art at The Aqua Art Fair Miami and Vulcan Inc. She has been awarded multiple fellowships and grants; including a Grant for Artist Projects (GAP) from Artist Trust, Clowes Fellowship for residency at the Vermont Studio Center, the Nellie Cornish Scholarship and residency at The Camac Art Centre in France, The Baer Art Center in Iceland, Jentel, Millay Colony for the Arts and The Center for Contemporary Printmaking. She resides in Seattle, WA. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2020.
Liz Tran, Mirror 32 (2020), 24 x 18 in, Mixed media on panel, Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art
About Morton Fine Art
Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora. Morton Fine Art founded the trademark *a pop-up project in 2010. *a pop-up project is MFA’s mobile gallery component which hosts temporary curated exhibitions nationally.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 