Richard STREITMATTER-TRAN (b. 1972, Bien Hoa, Vietnam) is an artist living and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He received his degree in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
His solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally including the de Sarthe Gallery (Hong Kong), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale (2007), The 2nd Asia Triennial in Manchester, 4th Jakarta Contemporary Ceramics Biennale, Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, Asia Art Now at Arario Beijing, 1st Pocheon Asian Art Festival, Gwangju Biennale (2004), Singapore Art Museum/Centre Pompidou video exhibition (2011), Kandada Art Space (Tokyo), 10 Chancery Lane Gallery (Hong Kong), Art Space Hue (Korea), Art Stage Singapore, Art Kaohsiung (Taiwan), The Vietnam Womens Museum, the 4th Guangzhou Triennale (2011), the Singapore Biennale (2008 & 2006), Nanjing Art Festival (China), Ke Center for Contemporary Art in Shanghai, Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Eslite Gallery (Taiwan), the Hugh Lane Gallery (Dublin), Chula Art Center and Bangkok University Gallery (Bangkok) and Dia Projects (Vietnam) .
He was an arts correspondent for the Madrid-based magazine Art.Es and and Ho Chi Minh City editor for Contemporary and has published in several books, catalogs and journals.
In 2005 he received the Martell Contemporary Asian Art Research Grant from the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong for his year-long research project, Mediating the Mekong. He was a Teaching Assistant at Harvard University (2000-2004), conducted media arts research at the MIT Media Lab (2000) and a visiting lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2003-4. He was an advisor to the Para/Site Curatorial Programme in Hong Kong and the San Art Artist Residency program in Ho Chi Minh City. From 2006 - 2015 he was Senior Lecturer at RMIT International University Vietnam.
Upon relocating to Vietnam in 2003, he formed ProjectOne, a Ho Chi Minh City-based performance art collective now defunct. Two years later he became a founding member of Mogas Station (2005-2007), a group of international creators (artists and architects) based in Ho Chi Minh City.
In 2010, he established DIA/PROJECTS, a contemporary art experiment and studio space in Ho Chi Minh City. Work- ing with collaborator Le Tuong Vi under the persona, VILE/ RATS, they form projects emerging from artistic research and speculative investigations into the fault lines of science, philosophy and art. Other projects have included collaborations with CIANT (Prague), The Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong), The Japan Foundation and The Japan Society. Since its inception, dia/projects has hosted five researchers in residence from Bangkok, Manila, Montreal, Seoul and Tokyo. From 2015-2017, with Tran Thanh Ha, Dia Projects launched a new exhibition space in Ho Chi Minh City.
As co-curator he conceived The Mekong exhibition with Russell Storer of the Queensland Art Gallery for the 6th Asia Pacific Triennale (APT6) in 2009 and continues developing curatorial concepts for Dia Projects. He was a finalist in the 2016 Sovereign Art Prize exhibited at Christie's in Hong Kong and was artist in residency at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Singapore in 2017 and Bangkok University Gallery in 2018.
While his practice historically has included performance and new media, his current focus involves the investigation of materials and largely through figurative sculpture, painting, installation and drawing. His work can be found in numerous publications worldwide and is in private and public collections including the Singapore Art Museum, The Documenta Archives, RMIT University Vietnam Art Collection, IILM Art Collection and Post-Vidai Collection.
Richard is represented by the de Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong and Beijing.
Richard STREITMATTER-TRAN