This essay was published in the catalog “Bùi Thanh Tâm: Christ, Buddha, and the Jigsaw” accompanying the exhibition under the same title, presented by GateGate Gallery at Chillala House of the Arts in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 2025.
Bùi Thanh Tâm—Outside In
Bùi Thanh Tâm was born in Thái Binh, a small province in northern Vietnam. Situated in the Red River Delta, the area’s land is rich and fertile. Thanks to the widespread cultivation of rice, rural life in Thái Binh follows an agricultural rhythm. Water, which is essential to the local wet-crop economy, seems to have fostered a fluidity in northern Vietnam’s cultural and spiritual heritage, with a number of traditional crafts developing together and influencing one another. The region is home to folk art forms such as chèo (musical), quan họ (folk musicals), múa rối nước (water puppet show), and, more importantly, Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống paintings, all of which heavily influenced Bùi Thanh Tâm’s practice, which is effectively “soaked” in tradition.
Perhaps that is why many of the works in this show originally came with no title, date of composition, or list of materials used. In the West, designating a piece "Untitled" invites closer scrutiny and more intense interpretive engagement. But Tâm’s refusal to name or document works instead reflects his heritage: a preference for labor and its meaning over historical classification. In a global system where the formalities of making and presenting art are deeply intertwined with institutional validation, Tâm’s practice preserves a unique sanctuary that is untamable . Moreover, having repeatedly shown in international museums and galleries, the artist is clearly aware of the conceptual framing that his work will receive. His conscious disregard for the routine “musts” of contemporary art marketing and criticism marks him as an original figure who not only extrapolates from folk imagery, but also creates alternative agencies for traditional cultural modes in the modern age.
Western art historical methodologies rely on a positivistic model: when it comes to physical details, the more factually accurate, the better. This applies not only to the artist’s mediums but also to establishing a date for each individual piece—a standard practice deemphasized by Bùi Thanh Tâm when he dates all the works created in the past five years “2020-2025.” He argues that the moral of a fable never lies in the year when the story was created. This purposeful omission is just one of his attempts to make himself transparent. Instead of spotlighting himself as creator, Tâm wishes viewers to see through him, identifying the works as projections from his mind and body.
He thus challenges the “global contemporary” art system and its reciprocal relationships between artists, art history, and the art market. In that professional loop, curators educate themselves about collector responses and the commercial standing of various artists, while galleries acquire a taste for what is liked by art critics and institutions. These selections are then so thoroughly internalized by artists that they subconsciously create works catering to gatekeeper preferences. Only outsider artists, disconnected from the mainstream art world, are unaffected by these dynamics. This is why outsider art’s “shock” factor is so valued, once the work enters the system via museum shows or cabinet-of-curiosity events like the Outsider Art Fair. At the other end of the spectrum, professional artists often graduate from MFA programs that cultivate awareness of both art history and the art market, and are mentored by those who received the exact same training. They pre-position themselves into the art world even before officially being recognized as a member of it. It is particularly rare to find an artist who lands somewhat in the middle of this spectrum. Bùi Thanh Tâm is one of them—not only occupying this in-between space but also acutely aware of it.
Tâm’s creative process involves first assembling a complicated multi-medium prototype—an “original” image that is time-consuming and technically challenging to create. Once he is satisfied with the picture, he manipulates it digitally through numerous iterations. The resulting “offspring” images are actually his preferred outputs. Like Andy Warhol, Tâm invites viewers to reflect on these derived works as simulacra, knowing that any attempt to locate an original will likely be futile. The procedure elucidates Tâm’s worldview: traditions should be honored and passed on via contemporary modifications. His multiples exhibit characteristics of indigenous and outsider art, yet they are also informed by the global art market and art history. Their appropriated symbols, motifs, and forms echo modern Vietnam’s exposure to a mixture of traditional motifs (both refined and vernacular), Communist iconography, and consumerist ads.
Bùi Thanh Tâm’s hesitation to publicly exhibit his prototypical “original” works can best be understood in terms of Plato’s Theory of Forms. The Platonic paradigm splits our world into two realms: the World of Appearances, i.e., the imperfect domain that we perceive through our senses, versus the perfect domain where things exist in their ideal state as the World of Forms. Plato argued that every object we encounter in daily life is merely an imperfect copy of its true self in the World of Forms, which can be perceived only via imagination. This top-down emanation parallels the way Tâm translates his works from their original concept into multiple physical realizations.
The motifs that Bùi Thanh Tâm selects for his “original” works are not limited to the heavenly. In addition to the faces of Christ and the Buddha, they include skulls, the Statue of Liberty, and photos of human eyes (those of the artist himself or his friends), frequently overlaid with Vietnamese folk imagery. Whereas Plato’s Theory of Forms presents a dichotomized worldview whose parallel realms do not intermingle, Bùi Thanh Tâm suggests that the two share certain qualities, especially with the aid of digital technologies which enable the transmigration and overlaying of distinct images. Buddha, though supremely elevated, evokes "the myriad faces of humanity" (眾生相) in the Diamond Sutra. Tâm highlights the dissolvability of the Buddha’s face by having it "invade" traditionally Western images such as the Crucifixion. The interpenetration of images in Tâm’s collages, involving village folk, animals, and deities, renders the border of Plato’s two worlds porous. With the aid of digital technology, man ascends to the divine—at least visually—just as easily as the gods descend to the World of Appearances.
Each of Tâm’s “original” images can generate an unlimited number of emanations. Plato famously remarked that no matter how hard we attempt to draw a perfect circle, it would not match the only true perfect circle from the World of Forms. Bùi Thanh Tâm employs the Platonic model in generating hundreds of images from his “originals,” but he treats each iteration with full respect by identifying the multiples as unique artworks. When an ascension is not imminent, his approach implies, this is perhaps our only salvation—to find value in life here and now. The artist shows little interest in regulating the number of images he generates from each “original.” Creating this profusion knowingly undermines the contemporary art-market “rarity” strategy. Tâm disputes the way artworks are limited by their edition structure and, more importantly, interrogates the very definition of “uniqueness” and its supreme value in the art world.
Drawing on global religions and Vietnamese folk art, Bùi Thanh Tâm’s World of Forms includes not only images and ideas, but also literal blocks of wood serving as vehicles of cultural heritage. Traditional Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống “paintings,” named after villages in northern Vietnam, are essentially woodblock prints that have been produced by craftsmen since the 17th century. With limited documentation, the craft has passed down from generation to generation not only via apprenticeship, but also through the very wood blocks themselves. Vietnamese artisans, producing new folk paintings every year, often rely on wood blocks that have been preserved for generations. Their functionality and repetitive use keep these relics very much alive.
With minute differentiations in how colors are applied and borders of the figures are treated (printed versus hand-painted), Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống paintings depend on their respective wood blocks as guides to both creating forms and applying colors. Like the hand of an angel descending from the World of Forms, these wood blocks, ensuring precision and protecting against deviations, are arguably the creators of Vietnamese traditional paintings. Of course, they are not without wear and tear after long repetitive use, with some being passed down for hundreds of years, but their guiding power is essentially unaltered. This is exactly how Bùi Thanh Tâm embraces tradition and advocates for his heritage. He produces and reproduces parts of Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống paintings in almost all his works, in accordance with the theme of each piece. (He chooses folk paintings depicting animals for a nature-themed works and folk paintings showing worshipping figures for his religion-themed pieces.) Moreover, the artist cares for these culturally fraught images by updating them through his fluency in contemporary art-making techniques. Collaging, layering, recoloring, and reshaping, Tâm rejuvenates Vietnamese traditional paintings. He thereby implies that his heritage has a place in the World of Forms, represented not by some holy figure but by the concrete objects that have guided Vietnamese craftsmen for centuries.
In the Vatican, Raphael’s masterpiece The School of Athens depicts Aristotle with his right hand thrust forward, parallel to the ground, reinforcing his counterargument—to look for reality in the physical world—while his mentor, Plato, pacing next to him, points a finger toward the sky and his World of Forms. Even though the argument between the two might be considered resolved by later philosophers, Bùi Thanh Tâm’s 2020-2025 works transfer the push-and-pull between the World of Forms and the World of Appearances to the digital era by fusing folk, pop, and outsider art. Raphael’s placement of Plato and Aristotle at the focal point of this grand fresco reflects Western philosophy’s impetus to argue competitively and centralize. On the contrary, Eastern thought more often emphasizes the coexistence of differences and cherishes conflicts in their unresolved or pre-resolved states. To Bùi Thanh Tâm, the myriad faces of humanity cannot be reduced to two central contending figures. It requires instead a humanitarian survey, not only from Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism), at the left of Raphael’s fresco, to Protogenes (ancient Greek painter), at the right, but also ranging from Đông Hồ village craftsmen in Vietnam to Andy Warhol and the consumerist West.