Frogman Art Presents “The Return to Essence” at West Bund Art & Design 2026

Poster credit: Frogman Art

Frogman Art was founded in 2004 and is one of China’s earlier important galleries to systematically introduce contemporary European and American bronze sculpture and Surrealist-style painting. It is particularly known for wildlife bronze sculpture and magical realist painting, and represents artists across Europe and North America. At this edition of West Bund Art & Design, Frogman Art will present nine artists from Europe and North America under the exhibition theme “The Return to Essence.” Working in sculpture and painting, they range from the minimalist distillation of form and the essential capture of animal bodies to the inner order of surreal images, the contemporary translation of decorative traditions, and magical realism’s excavation of spiritual dimensions beneath the visible world—all jointly pointing to a core question: when form has been reduced or penetrated to a point where it can be reduced no further and expressed no further, what remains of art? The participating artists offer a distinctive path of “penetrating appearances” through multiple dimensions: touch, color, story, geometry, abstraction, and inner rhythm.

Gé Pellini (b. 1966, Nancy, France) is an animal sculptor and also a naturalist. His practice follows the principle that “less is more”: over long processes of drawing and carving, he repeatedly removes redundant details until the elegant postures animals have evolved through natural selection emerge in the purest lines. He has studied horned animals with particular depth, intentionally amplifying the structure of horns and outlining muscles and power through shadow, plane, and pure line. Across marble, bronze, and aluminum, a plain aesthetic drive runs through Pellini’s work, allowing tactility to linger subtly within minimalist forms. He has completed public sculpture projects in Nancy, Namibia, Cyprus, Akita in Japan, Guatemala City, Marrakech, and elsewhere; his works have entered urban spaces and museum collections.

Michael Parkes, Night, 2026, oil on canvas,70 × 80 cm

Arūnas Žilys (b. 1953, Vilnius, Lithuania) graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, has exhibited continuously since 1976, and became a member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association in 1985. His painting begins with mythic Surrealism but unfolds through a highly distinctive language of color: jewel-like brilliant hues and small, energetic brushstrokes condense on the canvas surface into a sense of chromatic solidity and spatial dynamism. Žilys’s work stands apart within the Lithuanian art tradition. Rather than taking the path of direct emotional discharge or the repetition of local color, he redefines the order of painting between decorative aesthetics and conceptual symbols. Those seemingly tranquil images, upon deeper looking, reveal rich visual-language markers and an accumulation of cultural layers, involving the interweaving of historical memory and modern modes of thought. His works have been used in film and television productions such as Friends and The X-Files, and have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States.

Berdj Tchakedjian (b. 1939, Cairo, Egypt) graduated from the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Arts and moved to Canada in 1966. His paintings are based on clean, soft, and full lines, layering geometric elements; sensuous moving curves and bright, warm colors echo one another, creating a pictorial atmosphere that is both tranquil and balanced in beauty. Tchakedjian’s compositions are full without being crowded; his brushwork is sensitive and delicate, maintaining a subtle tension between geometric order and sensuous warmth. Many critics describe his work as a “return to original simplicity”—not through reduction toward abstraction, but through the inner harmony of line and color, bringing the picture back to an almost primordial state of clarity. His works are held by collectors and institutions in Switzerland, France, the United States, Canada, Egypt, Armenia, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

Roberto Miniati (b. 1952, Rome) uses acrylic on canvas to develop an abstract painting that is “unpreset and internally mediated” through the juxtaposition of color blocks and tonal relationships. His pictures rely neither on narrative nor on figurative motifs; rather, between the breathing of color and the tightening and loosening of structure, they return painting to an essential state akin to an inner rhythm. Within the framework of “The Return to Essence,” Miniati offers a painterly path to inner order beyond the materiality of sculpture.

Berdj Tchakedjian, Sitting By The Window, 2025, oil on canvas, 94 × 102 cm

Michael Parkes (b. 1944, Missouri, USA) is a pioneer of American magical realism. He currently lives in Spain and specializes in painting, lithography, and bronze sculpture. He studied at the University of Kansas in his early years, then gave up art-making and went to India to study Eastern philosophy for ten years; this experience thoroughly reshaped his visual language. Parkes’s paintings are realistic in principle but magical in subject: unfamiliar beasts meet mysterious winged women, good and evil engage in eternal struggle in a weightless space, and the imagery is nourished by Kabbalah, esoteric philosophy, and Eastern and Western mystical traditions. His color palette contrasts with the strong, dense colors common in European and American printmaking; elegant and harmonious, it conveys an almost limpid classical sensibility, making his work especially favored by Eastern collectors. Parkes is also a rare dedicated practitioner in the field of contemporary lithography; the making of one complex lithograph can span more than thirty years and go through over one hundred states. His works have been shown at international fairs such as Art Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, and the Chicago Art Fair, and Frogman Art has continued to present his solo and thematic exhibitions in recent years. Within the framework of “The Return to Essence,” Parkes offers a path different from formal subtraction: essence does not emerge only after form has been reduced; it lurks behind everyday perception and can be reached only by passing through realistic appearances.

In addition, the exhibition will present works by Stephen Page, John Morris, Igor Galanin, and Nastia Karaka, further expanding the boundaries of the theme “The Return to Essence” through diverse media. Together, the practices of the nine artists form an exhibition profile that takes “subtraction” and “penetration” as dual methods and “essence” as a shared orientation.