Richard Streitmatter-Tran was born in 1972 in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. He received his degree in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. For the first decade of his career Richard's artwork could be described as strictly conceptual, but after 2013 he began to focus on producing artwork that required a meticulous level of fine craftsmenship. As a result, his current body of work is both rooted in the conceptual rigor of contemporary art theory and the skills behind traditional techiques.
Read MoreRichards has also been an arts correspondent for the Madrid-based magazine Art.Es and the Ho Chi Minh City editor for the magazine Contemporary. He 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. Richard will be an artist in residency at the Centre of Contemporary Art (CCA) in Singapore in 2017.
His recent solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally including "Mekong - New Mythologies," Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong (2017); "Odyssey," Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2016); Jarkarta Ceramics Biennle, Indonesia (2016); "Secret Archipeligo," Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2015); 'Doubt and Believe: Exhibition of Nguyen Son and R. Streitmatter-Tran," Womens Art Museum, Hanoi, Vietnam (2013); "Panorama: Recent Art from Contemporary Asia," Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2012); "Guangzhou Triennale 4: Art Domain Migration," Guangzhou, China (2011); "Institution for the Future," Asia Triennial, Manchester, United Kingdom (2011); FAX" Para/site Art Space, Hong Kong (2010); "Transportasian: Photography from Southeast Asia," Signapore Art Museum (2009); "Wonder," Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2008); "Migration Addicts," 52 Venice Biennale, Collatoral Events, Venice, Italy (2007) and "Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves," ZKM: Center for Art and Media, Karslruhe, Germany (2007).
Richard's artworks are part of the permanent collections of the Documenta Archives, Kassell, Germany; The Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; IILM Art Colllection, Gurgaon/New Delhi, India; RMIT University Vietnam Collection, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Post Vidai Collection, Switzerland & Vietnam.
Richard lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Text courtesy DE SARTHE.