Exhibition “Christ, Buddha, and the Jigsaw”
10 am – 12 pm & 01:30 pm – 09 pm, 17 – 24 Nov 2025
Chillala – House of Art
75 Xuân Thủy, Thảo Điền, Thủ Đức, HCMC
From the organizer:
The exhibition is organized by Gate Gate Gallery, curated by Phil Zheng Cai – curator, writer, and partner of Eli Klein Gallery, New York – and Richard Vine, art critic and former managing editor of Art in America.
Renowned for painting series such as “Crazy People” (2010–14) and “Young Vietnamese Girls” (2010–17), both of which satirizing the contemporary collision between local values and global pop culture in Asia, artist Bùi Thanh Tâm has spent the past five years expanding his artistic vision toward global issues while experimenting with digital image-making processes.
“Christ, Buddha, and the Jigsaw” marks the first exhibition in which Tâm presents his multiples on paper alongside several collaged paintings from which they originate. Drawing from traditional craft materials of northern Vietnamese villages such as Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống, and combining them with universal religious and cultural symbols such as Christ, Buddha, the Statue of Liberty, skulls, and eyeballs, Tâm refrains from classical or descriptive representation. Instead, he places these images within a game-like structure filled with symbols of chessboards, puzzles, and interlocking pieces, creating a dialogue between traditional values and the logic of modern play.
Through photographing, digital manipulation, and producing multiple versions of his paintings, Bùi Thanh Tâm engages with the global discourse on reproducibility and the notion of originality in art. His practice reflects the impact of technology and mass production in contemporary society while posing questions about the meaning of the original, the copy, and cultural identity in the age of globalization.
About artist
Bùi Thanh Tâm (born 1979) grew up in Thái Bình, the cradle of Northern Vietnam’s folk culture. He graduated from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Hanoi.
Drawing inspiration from the traditional Đông Hồ, Kim Hoàng, and Hàng Trống woodblock painting styles, Bùi Thanh Tâm’s practice nowadays moves fluidly between the folk and the contemporary. His methods of cutting, collaging, and layering serve as a means of restructuring Vietnamese cultural memory within a global context. He juxtaposes folk, religious, and pop-cultural symbols to question the relationship between the original and the derivative, tradition and modernity, the sacred and the profane.
Bùi Thanh Tâm’s works have been widely exhibited in Vietnam, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and beyond. His works are included in museum and private collections across Asia, the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada.
About the curators
Phil Zheng Cai (American, b. Shanghai) is a curator and writer based in New York. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA in Social Science, and received his MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has held posts at Mary Boone Gallery, Phillips Auctioneers, and is currently a partner at Eli Klein Gallery.
Cai’s curated exhibitions have received critical acclaim. His curated exhibition “(In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography” was reviewed by Hyperallergic, Musee Magazine, Asian American Arts Alliance AMP Magazine, and many others. His curated exhibition “Alienation?” was reviewed by the Brooklyn Rail. He has participated in panel discussions and talks at institutions such as the Asia Society Museum New York, the SCAD Museum of Art, Columbia University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, among others.
Richard Vine is a former managing editor of Art in America and the author of several hundred critical articles and reviews. Vine has taught at the New School, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University, and the University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
In addition, he has lectured at museums and cultural institutions throughout the world, and curated exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, the National Academy of Art in New Delhi, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, the AHL Foundation in New York, and the Central Art Museum in Hangzhou, China, as well as the commercial venues Studio Artego and Bienvenu Steinberg and J Gallery, both in New York.
