Buddhist philosophy has long transcended the boundaries of religion to become a fertile ground for artistic exploration. Concepts such as impermanence (anicca), non-self (anātman), and mindfulness have inspired artists seeking to question materiality, identity, and the nature of perception. In contemporary art, these principles are not merely illustrated, they are enacted through artistic processes and conceptual frameworks. Artists like John Giorno, Ugo Rondinone, and Soonik Kwon embody this spiritual lineage, transforming their practices into spaces of contemplation, healing, and presence.

Transforming their practices into spaces of contemplation, healing, and presence.

American poet and performance artist John Giorno (1936–2019), a long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, brought Buddhist philosophy into the urban counterculture of the 1960s and beyond. Through his Dial-A-Poem project and typographic artworks, Giorno fused mantra-like repetition with the immediacy of everyday language. His poems often took the form of affirmations or koans, short, powerful phrases like You Got to Burn to Shine or I Resigned Myself to Being Here, which functioned as direct transmissions of presence.

Giorno’s practice was grounded in the belief that language, when stripped of ego and artifice, could be a vehicle for awakening. His collaborations with figures such as William S. Burroughs and Andy Warhol were infused with this ethos, but it was his Buddhist faith that gave his work its contemplative depth. Through sound, performance, and text, Giorno offered a secular yet spiritual experience, dissolving the boundary between art and life.

Through sound, performance, and text, Giorno offered a secular yet spiritual experience, dissolving the boundary between art and life.

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964) has often referenced Buddhist concepts in his exploration of time, emotion, and natural cycles. While not explicitly religious, his work invokes the atmosphere of Zen through its stillness and spaciousness.

His work invokes the atmosphere of Zen through its stillness and spaciousness.

In installations like Vocabulary of Solitude or Seven Magic Mountains, Rondinone plays with presence and absence, repetition and transformation. His use of elemental motifs, the sun, the moon, the tree, recalls the symbolic language of Buddhist cosmology.

Rondinone’s meditative figures, cast in wax or stone and often portrayed in moments of introspection, evoke a deep inner silence. His installations frequently create environments of slowness and reflection, inviting the viewer to pause. The sense of circularity and recurrence in his work parallels the Buddhist view of time not as linear progression, but as a wheel, samsara, where moments return and dissolve. His long relationship with Giorno also deepened his connection to Buddhist philosophy, infusing his work with an introspective and compassionate tone.

The South Korean artist Soonik Kwon (b. 1969) integrates Buddhist teachings into a rigorously minimalist and meditative visual language. His Absence of Ego series exemplifies the Buddhist ideal of dissolving the self through repetition and mindful labor. Each piece, formed by the rhythmic accumulation of graphite, sand, and pigment, becomes a silent ritual, echoing the repetition found in prostrations or mantra recitations. Kwon’s emphasis on the interstice, the space between moments, aligns with the Buddhist view of time as a fluid, continuous present.

Kwon’s emphasis on the interstice, the space between moments, aligns with the Buddhist view of time as a fluid, continuous present.

In works like those shown in Interstice of Time, Kwon incorporates geometric abstraction to symbolize a cosmology rooted in interdependence: circles as sky, squares as earth, triangles as human existence. These shapes do not dominate the composition but harmonize within it, underscoring the Buddhist principle that no element exists in isolation. His use of graphite, at once dark and luminous, evokes both suffering and renewal, suggesting that emptiness is not negation but potential.

Kwon’s interpretation of the interstice also extends to emotional and psychological experience. Rather than seeing absence as loss, he understands it as transformation. The void becomes a space of regeneration, much like the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, where the dissolution of form leads to new awareness.

The void becomes a space of regeneration, much like the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, where the dissolution of form leads to new awareness.

In the work of Giorno, Rondinone, and Kwon, Buddhism is not a thematic reference but a lived aesthetic. These artists reinterpret its teachings through diverse mediums, language, installation, and material abstraction, yet they share a common desire to suspend time, transcend ego, and offer spaces for presence. Whether through the echo of a spoken word, the stillness of a sculptural figure, or the quiet accumulation of marks, their art affirms the Buddhist idea that emptiness is not void, but openness, the fertile ground for awareness and transformation.