TRAN VAN THAO: THE ABSTRACT VISUAL LANGUAGE OF EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIOR

Over more than three decades, Tran Van Thao has developed an abstract language difficult to reduce to a single style. His paintings feature straight lines, circles, spirals, plus signs, numbers, horizontal and vertical axes, and shapes close to geometric structures; but this is not the kind of geometry that aims for precision, rationality, or absolute order. These forms are often tilted, interrupted, obscured, blurred, or damaged by the material surface. They do not stand still as completed units, but bear the marks of the formation process. It can be said that Tran Van Thao absorbed the vocabulary of geometry, but allowed it to flow through emotion, the body, and the act of painting.

The crucial starting point in his painting is not a predetermined image, but the interaction between color, material, and intuition. The painting is not developed as a complete mental blueprint. It gradually takes shape through layering, erasing, scratching, joining, and adjusting. Each operation simultaneously creates a new sign and transforms what already existed. Therefore, Tran Van Thao's paintings are not merely spaces containing images; they also preserve the time and history of the creative process itself.

From the mid-1990s, in works such as "Orange Light," "Day and Night," "Old Space," and many untitled paintings, he organized the composition using segmented squares, panels, and shapes. These structures might initially suggest geometric thinking, but the thickness of the colors, the roughness of the paper, sand, fabric, and raised materials have diminished the immaculateness of the forms. Each segment is no longer a flat and clear unit, but becomes a layer of strata: some areas are raised, some are obscured, and some appear to have undergone collision and erosion. The structure in his paintings is not established to affirm order, but to show that order is always formed in relation to imperfection and transformation.

This is particularly evident in Tran Van Thao's use of mixed materials. Paperboard, fabric, collage, oil pastels, or everyday materials not only add surface effects, but also give the work the appearance of a body that has been constructed, damaged, and then healed. The seams, folds, tears, and layers are not completely concealed; on the contrary, they become meaningful parts of the structure. The painting appears as the temporary result of many opposing forces: retaining and erasing, thickening and hollowing, controlling and releasing.

From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, numbers, plus signs, crosses, circles, and symbols close to writing appeared increasingly prominently in his paintings. However, they did not function as a code system that could be interpreted in a single direction. A number does not necessarily represent quantity; a plus sign does not necessarily represent addition; a circle does not simply represent wholeness. They are freed from conventional meaning to become rhythm, stopping points, thrust, or traces of an action.

Here, Tran Van Thao does not completely eliminate the possibility of recognition. He keeps the symbols in a state of limbo between form and sign. The viewer can recognize them, but is immediately pushed back to the material, the brushstrokes, and the rhythm. This oscillation creates a characteristic perceptual situation: we both want to read and are compelled to look; we both want to find a stable meaning and realize that meaning only exists in the dynamic relationship between visual elements.

The spiral is a clear example of this mechanism. The central spiral at the bottom draws the gaze inward, while the geometric bands and diagonal lines above continuously radiate in many directions. The composition simultaneously creates a force of convergence and dispersion. The spiral is not just a decorative motif or a closed symbol; it becomes a way of organizing the movement of the gaze. The viewer is drawn to the focal point, but is not held there, for the entire surrounding structure pushes the visual sense outward. Associations of cycle, return, or the possibility of rebirth therefore do not come from a pre-imposed symbol, but arise from the visual experience of movement.

In *Lines*, the horizontal axes, diagonals, and large black areas seem to establish direction quite clearly. However, none of them truly lead to an end point. The black bands open up like arrows, sails, or pointers, but at the same time can be reversed in perception. The flowing streaks and freehand strokes loosen the rigidity of the geometry. The work does not create a map of a specific journey; it makes the viewer feel the very state of having to choose between many possibilities. Lines both divide and connect; both orient and give rise to uncertainty.

The way Tran Van Thao names his works clearly reflects this way of thinking. "White Spot," "Light," "Shadow," "Line," "Spiral," "Wind on the River," or "New Moon" are both titles and a vocabulary of fundamental visual elements. He doesn't direct the viewer to a specific story or event, but rather names how colors and forms appear: a spot rising in darkness, a light source permeating matter, a shadow being absorbed, a line changing direction, an invisible movement causing the surface to vibrate.

In that sense, the subject matter in Tran Van Thao's paintings is also the way the work operates. "White Spot" doesn't just refer to a white area. The work places a large bright area in the middle of a system of scratched layers of gray-blue, black, and brown, making it seem both to be forming and to be swallowed back by the dark background. The viewer isn't entirely sure whether it's form, light, or space. This uncertainty gives rise to a discourse on fragile presence and the possibility of revelation.

In Light, the white and pale yellow areas are not presented as external sources of illumination. They seem to permeate through layers of brown, gray, and black matter. Light does not triumph over darkness in a dramatic contrast; it exists persistently, discreetly, sometimes merely as a streak through an aged surface. The perception of light is therefore linked to time and enduring existence rather than to instantaneous brilliance.

Conversely, Shadows is organized by fields of dark color, markings and shapes that continuously appear and are absorbed. The “shadow” in the work has no stable form; it is the state of an existence losing clarity. The viewer is placed between two possibilities: seeing a form or merely perceiving its afterimage. It is this interlude that creates the psychological depth of the work. Memory here is not a recounted content, but a way in which images both return and withdraw from the capacity for perception.

From the late 2000s, through the series Rain in the Sun, Shadows, and Memories, Tran Van Thao's paintings showed a tendency towards minimalism. In Rain in the Sun, a wide expanse of blue is activated by patches of white, gray, pale yellow, and elongated lines. Forms become thin, soft, as if dissolving into the air. The title contains a paradox: rain and sun coexist. But instead of illustrating a weather phenomenon, the painting transforms this paradox into a relationship between layers of light and dark, between the weight of the color patches and the fragility of the lines. The viewer perceives a space where two opposing states do not exclude each other.

This minimalism continues to develop in Lines and reaches a different level of openness in Wind on the River. Here, symbols, specks of color, and numbers are scattered across a wide expanse of blue. There is no overwhelming focal point. The gaze must move between small points, following rhythms of convergence and dispersion. The "wind" is not seen directly; It is only perceived through the distribution, deviation, and imagined movement of the signs. The work, therefore, does not present an object, but constructs a sense of invisible force. This is a significant shift in Tran Van Thao's language: from a dense material surface to a spacious plane, from accumulation to diffusion.

The 2025 New Moon brings this trend to a lighter and brighter state. Against an ivory, grayish-blue, and pale purple background, the lines, yellow spots, ovals, and dark blue plus signs appear with varying intensity. The painting no longer carries the weight of the layers of material seen in the previous stage, but still retains the principle of appearance and disappearance. The signs seem to have just entered the visible realm. They have not yet coalesced into complete forms, but neither have they completely vanished.

The “New Moon,” therefore, does not necessarily have to be understood as an image of nature. It suggests a state of form: incomplete, not yet closed, in the process of creation. The plus sign, the circle, and the patches of color are no longer remnants of heavy memories but become gentle impulses, opening rhythms. After years of working with material depth, overlay, and muted tones, Tran Van Thao does not deny the old language; he makes it sparser, brighter, and more breathable.

Looking across the different stages, one can discern a persistent logic in Tran Van Thao's painting: form is always placed in an unfinished state. Lines may be interrupted, colors may be obscured, symbols may lose their meaning, and empty space may become an active part of the composition. For him, abstraction is not about eliminating the tangible world to arrive at an autonomous formal system. It is about perceiving the world at the moment it has not yet become a clear image—when sensation, memory, and movement are still searching for forms of existence.

Therefore, Tran Van Thao's painting lies in a special intersection. It uses units of geometric abstraction but does not pursue absolute rationality; it carries the energy of expressive abstraction but does not completely surrender to spontaneous outburst; it preserves traces of behavior but always maintains a balance and restraint. He allows improvisation to create possibilities, then lets intuition reorganize those possibilities into an open, unconstrained order.

Tran Van Thao's unique style, therefore, lies not in a single motif, but in his way of softening the rationality and confinement often associated with geometry, preventing expression from becoming unrestrained and allowing the act of painting to settle into structure. In his paintings, lines are both form and movement; symbols can be read and resist interpretation; empty space is both absence and a place where form prepares to appear. Stillness and movement are not opposed, but coexist in a plane that is always silently changing.

Perhaps that is why Tran Van Thao's paintings do not require the viewer to find a final message. They invite a slow way of looking, in which meaning is formed through the continuous adjustment of perception. We see a point of light and then recognize the surrounding darkness; we follow a line and then encounter a change of direction; we search for a form and only find traces remaining. It is in this process that the work unfolds its discourse: not a discourse illustrated by images, but a discourse formed by the way images appear, recede, and continue to generate.

Nguyen Thanh Binh

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