Chân dung họa sĩ Bùi Xuân Phái

In his portrait of Bui Xuan Phai, Choe uses caricature to integrate the artist's face into the very world of painting that made him famous. The face is constructed with broken, thin, and jagged black lines, evoking the rooftops, windows, walls, and familiar horizons of Hanoi's old town. The shades of gray, white, and black create a space that is both cold, old, and steeped in memory.

This caricature not only exaggerates the appearance but also condenses the artistic identity: Bui Xuan Phai appears as if he were created from the very streets he painted. Therefore, the portrait simultaneously becomes a metaphor for "Phai's Streets"—where the artist's name and the image of the old town are so closely intertwined that they are almost inseparable.