LIZ TRAN reviewed in The Washington Post

“Mirror Three” by Liz Tran combines drips, spatters and ink on wooden panels with equal measures of abandon and precision. (Morton Fine Art)

Liz Tran

by Mark Jenkins,

May 21, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Seattle artist Liz Tran drips and spatters candy-colored paint and ink on wooden panels with equal measures of abandon and precision. The abstract pictures in her Morton Fine Art show, “The Webs Installed by Our Dreams,” offer vigorous spontaneity and robust compositions, the latter often inspired by Rorschach test inkblots administered to her when she was a child. Yet minor tweaks to Tran’s formula yield very different effects.

Most of the paintings are rectangular and rendered on white backdrops. Even the loosest of them seem focused on a middle point, but that centeredness is accentuated in the two pictures on circular panels. Adding a colored background, especially the black of “Ornament 7,” also makes Tran’s free gestures more cohesive. So does moving the pictorial activity to the top of the frame in “Bluescape.”

One other painting offers a fruitful variation. “Big Bang 3” is hardly out of place in this selection, but its oscillating, concentric forms suggest something quite different from a Rorschach test inkblot: a Hindu or Buddhist mandala. Rather than one person’s untidy reveries, the picture evokes an orderly cosmos.

Liz Tran: The Webs Installed by Our Dreams Through May 27 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302. Open by appointment.

Available Artwork by LIZ TRAN

LIZ TRAN’s solo exhibition “The Webs Installed by Our Dreams”

LIZ TRAN’s abstract artwork inspired by Rorschach test explores mental health, perception and subjectivity

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Mirror 29, 2020, 16″x16″, mixed media on panel The Webs Installed by Our Dreams A solo exhibition of mixed media artwork by LIZ TRAN April 29 – May 27, 2021 ARTIST STUDIO TOUR On Morton Fine Art’s YouTube Channel Video credit: Jarrett Hendrix Contact the gallery for private viewing appointment, price list, additional information and acquisition. (202) 628-2787 (call or text) info@mortonfineart.com Available artwork by LIZ TRAN

About The Webs Installed by Our Dreams The Webs Installed by Our Dreams, is inspired by LIZ TRAN’s early memories of 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. The Webs Installed by Our Dreams will be on view from April 29 – May 27, 2021.  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.

Mirror 3, 2020, 27″x54″, mixed media on panel

Mirror 2, 2020, 27″x54″, mixed media on panel

About LIZ TRAN

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.

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 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 COVID-19 protocol:  By appointment. Mask required. Contact the gallery for supplementary artwork documentation such as detail images and short videos. Safe, no contact door to door delivery available. Shipping nationally and internationally.