artLIVE – ‘Đang trôi’ is a contemplative, meandering journey by artist Bui Chat. Beneath the surface lies the echo of an unanswered question – now transformed into gentle waves rippling across his canvases.
Bui Chat – An artist who defies visual pleasantries
Born in Ho Nai (Dong Nai), with family roots in Thai Binh, and long based in Saigon, Bui Chat has worked in many fields. Without a formal art school background, he chose to teach himself, explore independently, and shape his visual language in a way that is wholly his own.
Over more than two decades, Bui Chat has published eight poetry collections and held over ten solo art exhibitions. He is also recognized as a pioneering figure in Vietnam’s independent publishing movement – a significant voice in that space.
His poetry bears a distinctive voice: profound, ironic, at times coldly humorous. It has been translated into many languages, contributing to the multilingual presence of Vietnamese poetry on the global map.
As for painting, Bui Chat views the ability to “draw well” as a technical act necessary, but not sufficient. What interests him more is the ability to “see a painting”: a perceptive state requiring empathy, intuition, and the capacity to recognize what has yet to be named. A skillful painter may be deft with their hands, but it is the artist who listens to the work who can build entire worlds.
This may explain why Bui Chat’s paintings do not aim to impress or dominate the gaze. Instead, they quietly invite us to pause, to see, to reflect, to smile, to drift and finally, to fall into silence. Like ‘Đang trôi’ itself, the exhibition gently reminds us: sometimes, it is only within blurred boundaries that we can touch the deepest parts of ourselves.
‘Đang Trôi’ – Drifting along one’s own stream of thought
The ‘Đang trôi’ collection was inspired by Bui Chat’s poetry book “Chung ta dang troi di dau?” (Where Are We Drifting?), continuing a natural evolution from text to image. Comprising 20 works in oil and mixed media created between 2020 and 2025, the series is, as he puts it, a way of “repaying a debt to poetry.”
It is a long-standing debt from unfinished verses, unresolved thoughts, and persistent obsessions. These compelled him to seek a new form of release. And painting became the answer.
Still rooted in an abstract, poetic, symbolic style, this new series feels more “seasoned” – a phrase both playful and sincere. Seasoned in tone. Seasoned in mood. Seasoned with life itself, absorbed into each brushstroke and layer of paint.
While his earlier works often seemed ephemeral or dissolved between word and image, ‘Đang trôi’ signals a shift: richer, more forceful, with a clear tension of visual push and pull.
Colors are bolder, contrast is heightened, and his color experiments more daring. This marks not only visual maturity but also hints at a new visual language in his abstract journey: no longer drifting aimlessly, but drifting with gravity with memory, with distilled fragments of life and time.
Curator Phan Trong Van notes: “If you know Bui Chat’s poetry with its roughness and dreaminess, rebelliousness and quiet you won’t be surprised that his paintings carry the same spirit: uninterested in pleasing the eye, unbound by composition, and unconcerned with conventional ‘beauty’. Yet within that refusal lies a unique language: fragmented, drifting, uneven but deeply intentional. A world that drifts but is never lost.”
‘Đang trôi’ is more than just the name of an exhibition. It is an existential state, a way of life when the artist rows a boat into the night, then quietly releases the oars, letting the current take him wherever it may, without chasing a destination.
In that journey, Bui Chat collects fragments of thought, shards of poetry, and spontaneous gestures and turns them into paintings. Sometimes rough, sometimes gentle; sometimes like a scream, sometimes like a breath, thin as mist.
The ‘Đang trôi’ exhibition by artist Bùi Chát takes place from July 14 to July 24, 2025, at 22 Gallery, No. 22 Pham Cu Luong, Tan Son Hoa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City).
Photo: 22 Gallery
