Ambedo is a luxurious hardcover book that collects the very best paintings and drawings by Tran Nguyen completed from 2009 to 2018. It showcases her sensuous and personal work that was done for gallery exhibitions, as well as her advertising, book and editorial illustration projects completed as a freelance artist. Over 120 paintings are featured along with nearly a dozen preliminary sketches. An introduction by Tran opens the book, followed by her brief intimate commentary for each of her solo and group show chapters.

Tran’s paintings are created with a soft, delicate quality using colored pencil and acrylic on paper. She’s most known for her paintings of whimsical women and melancholic landscapes, which often possess an air of fantasy and surrealism.

Ambedo is a collection of all of the sweat and tears that Nguyen shed into the first decade of her career. It’s a recording of her progression as an artist in terms of style, technique and personal narrative. The book includes gold gilt edges, gold foil for the Ambedo title on the front cover, and a gold spot color used for interior text.

This book is one of my chance discoveries while browsing through the always excellent Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku during my recent trip. I also have to thank the artist for introducing me to a new word –

ambedo n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life.

I’m particularly delighted by Tran Nguyen’s love for Neo-classical poses, by which she also infuses with Surrealistic visual motifs, creating genre sensibilities that are both contemporary and antiquated. A quick flip-through of the book at the bookstore quickly convinced me that I like the artist’s work, and this is an easy recommendation.

I would also recommend Hieu Nguyen’s ( Kelogsloop ) art book, which I feel share certain stylistic similarities.

“Ambedo: The Art of Tran Nguyen” book details :

– Dimensions – 9 x 2 x 12 inches
– Hard cover
– 192 pages, full color

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