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Beyond the Frame: International Contemporary Masterpieces
Art Macao 2025 Collateral Exhibition

Contemporary art reveals its beauty through intuitive resonance, as artists transcend borders, cultures and languages with colors and imagination to evoke universal connections.

As one of Macao’s international cultural portals, Sands Gallery continues to fulfil its role as a platform for “exchange, mutual inspiration, and elevation.” Six distinguished international artists – Song Zhou, Bibi Lei, Jun Oson, GRAFFLEX, Jonni Cheatwood, and Ilya Milstein – converge at Sands Gallery to present the exhibition “Beyond the Frame: International Contemporary Masterpieces,” collectively exploring the dissolution and transformation of artistic boundaries in a global context.

These artists break conventional frameworks through distinctive visual languages, employing diverse mediums including painting, sculpture, installation art, and mixed media. Their works navigate freely between materiality, space, and cultural narratives, forging new artistic frontiers while constructing deeply personal creative realms.

Beyond passive viewing, their creations extend an invitation to participate, to reflect, to create encounters with art, and ultimately, to engage in genuine dialogue with artistic expression.

Beyond the Frame: International Contemporary Masterpieces
Art Macao 2025 Collateral Exhibition

Contemporary art reveals its beauty through intuitive resonance, as artists transcend borders, cultures and languages with colors and imagination to evoke universal connections.

As one of Macao’s international cultural portals, Sands Gallery continues to fulfil its role as a platform for “exchange, mutual inspiration, and elevation.” Six distinguished international artists – Song Zhou, Bibi Lei, Jun Oson, GRAFFLEX, Jonni Cheatwood, and Ilya Milstein – converge at Sands Gallery to present the exhibition “Beyond the Frame: International Contemporary Masterpieces,” collectively exploring the dissolution and transformation of artistic boundaries in a global context.

These artists break conventional frameworks through distinctive visual languages, employing diverse mediums including painting, sculpture, installation art, and mixed media. Their works navigate freely between materiality, space, and cultural narratives, forging new artistic frontiers while constructing deeply personal creative realms.

Beyond passive viewing, their creations extend an invitation to participate, to reflect, to create encounters with art, and ultimately, to engage in genuine dialogue with artistic expression.

Exhibition Period: 29 Jul to 15 Oct 2025
Venue: Sands Gallery, Level 6, The Grand Suites at Four Seasons
Opening Hours: 11:00am to 7:00pm
Free admission

Organizer:Sands China Ltd. 
Curatorial & Artistic Management:ARTICROSS
Artists: Song Zhou, Bibi Lei, GRAFFLEX, Jun Oson, Jonni Cheatwood, Ilya Milstein

Artists & Artworks

Bibi Lei

Born in Macao, Bibi Lei is a Macanese-Portuguese artist based in Tokyo. She paints with her fingers, channeling childlike instinct and vivid color into dreamlike, emotionally charged works. Her signature Brave Children symbolize the untamed innocence that lives within us all—figures that float, leap, and explore with raw hope and imagination. They also reflect her inner dialogue as a woman, a mother, and an artist. Influenced by her multicultural roots, Bibi blends Macao’s cultural hybridity with the contemplative rhythm of life in Japan. She describes her practice as a dialogue between Mother & Muse—a journey through motherhood, inner child, and spiritual perception. In her work, creation is a return: to intuition, to the child within, and to the purest forms of joy and imagination.

GRAFFLEX

GRAFFLEX is a South Korean artist and designer known for his distinctive style that merges street culture, cartoon symbols, and a minimalist visual language. His work features bold black outlines, flat color blocks, and geometric shapes, reassembling childhood memories and pop culture references into a contemporary vocabulary that is both playful and design-forward. Influenced by cartoons, hip-hop, and street art, GRAFFLEX’s creations evoke a sense of nostalgia while also reflecting on identity, memory, and cultural reproduction. His practice spans illustration, public art, fashion design, and installation, and he has collaborated with numerous international brands. Through his strong cross-disciplinary spirit and visual storytelling, he creates a vibrant dialogue between art and popular culture.

Ilya Milstein

Ilya Milstein is a hand-drawn illustrator whose works blend architectural drafting precision with digital coloring to capture the poetry of everyday life. Drawing from Dutch Renaissance painting, Japanese ukiyo-e, and mid-century Franco-Belgian comics, his style merges classical influence with contemporary sensibility. His compositions are refined and detailed, often portraying quiet urban moments and emotional nuance, immersing viewers in nostalgic, story-rich scenes. Rooted in a multicultural background, Ilya transforms personal memories and cross-cultural elements into a warm, human-centered visual language. His work balances the rigor of design with the tenderness of storytelling, forming a visual narrative that bridges image and memory. Each piece invites audiences to look again at the familiar—this time with greater care, reflection, and feeling.

Jun Oson

Jun Oson is a contemporary artist from Japan, active since 2005. Known for his peanut-shaped characters, his work blends bold colors, clean comic-like lines, and a distinctly playful style. Influenced by Japanese manga and animation as well as Western artists like James Jarvis and KAWS, Oson has developed a cross-cultural, borderless visual language. His compositions often feature diverse characters—humans, monsters, and robots—reflecting a deep appreciation for inclusivity, imagination, and cultural fluidity. Straddling the worlds of fine art and pop culture, Oson uses stylized figures and surreal scenes to explore identity, society, and human relationships.

Jonni Cheatwood

Jonni Cheatwood is a self-taught American artist known for his quilt-like canvases made from sewn fabrics such as denim, burlap, and found textiles. His works blend bold gestures in oil and acrylic with dyed natural materials, challenging the conventions of painting. Cheatwood’s practice interweaves abstraction and figuration, often obscuring his subjects’ faces to explore themes of identity, anonymity, and memory. Deeply inspired by family photos, he transforms mundane yet emotional moments into layered compositions, using stitching as a metaphor for piecing together memories and selfhood. His expressive mark-making and dynamic compositions reflect influences from street art and Abstract Expressionism, bridging personal narrative with broader cultural dialogue. Through this tactile, emotional, and conceptual approach, Cheatwood presents a compelling artistic language that speaks to both individual heritage and shared human experience.

Song Zhou

Song Zhou is a contemporary artist known for his continual innovation in visual language and conceptual thought. Grounded in hyperrealistic painting, he incorporates elements of technology, philosophy, and futurism to explore the deep interconnections between nature and consciousness. His artistic concept of “New Nature” fuses natural motifs with abstract forms, creating a distinctive visual vocabulary that combines realistic precision with symbolic resonance. Recurring elements like broken pencils and emblematic leaves reflect his inquiry into cognitive paradoxes and social metaphors. Zhou’s work navigates between biomorphic structures and mechanical aesthetics, between the real and the speculative, weaving a space that is at once intellectual and emotional. Through this layered approach, he invites viewers to enter a realm where metaphor meets reality—expressing a unique aesthetic marked by cultural depth and subtle humor.