Artbridger Returns to Art Central and Takes Over Soho House Hong Kong for Art Month

The international art platform returns to Art Central with rising artist Li Hongcheng’s tea-based paintings and stages a takeover at Soho House Hong Kong — including a rare presentation of the late Hussein Madi, the “Lebanese Picasso”

As the city enters Art Month, Artbridger — an international platform committed to championing emerging and underrepresented artists — returns to Art Central and stages a takeover at Soho House Hong Kong with a series of solo presentations and collective exhibitions, talks, workshops, and screenings. This March, Artbridger brings together voices from China, the MENA region, South Africa, and Europe under one curatorial vision, acting as a connector between artistic communities worldwide.

ARTBRIDGER AT ART CENTRAL HONG KONG (25 – 29 March)

• Solo Presentation: Li Hongcheng, The Weight of the Hidden and Sunken (Booth D14)

Artbridger presents Li Hongcheng under Art Central’s Solo Presentations with The Weight of the Hidden and Sunken at Booth D14. A twice graduate of the Oil Painting Department at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Li now divides his time between Guangzhou and Macau, where he is pursuing a Doctor of Fine Arts at Macau University of Science and Technology. Li has developed a practice that uses tea as its primary medium, an unconventional material elevated into a vehicle for conceptual depth.

His choice of medium positions the work within and beyond the Chinese experimental ink movement, pushing the conceptual possibilities further than the artists who first introduced tea stains into that tradition. Through repeated processes of immersion, dripping, and waiting — some works requiring months of slow accumulation — Li creates surfaces where layered tea pigment resembles geological strata. The resulting paintings sit at the threshold between ink tradition and material experimentation, where control and surrender coexist in every mark.

Spanning more than ten works, including pieces from the series The Missing 21 Grams and Tenmoku, the exhibition invites viewers into a silent tension where matter and time intertwine. In the context of an art fair defined by speed and spectacle, Li’s work asks for the opposite: slowness, patience, and attention to what accumulates beneath the surface.

• Soho House Lounge at Art Central

Extending its presence beyond the booth, Artbridger also activates the Soho House Lounge at Art Central with Reverie in Provence, a full backdrop image by Elsa Jeandedieu and Faustine Badrichani. Shown alongside curated works by Fumani Maluleke and Hussein Madi, the lounge brings together four artists from across the programme—spanning South Africa, Lebanon, France, and Hong Kong—and creates a direct bridge between the Art Central booth and the exhibitions at Soho House Hong Kong.

ARTBRIDGER AT SOHO HOUSE HONG KONG

During Hong Kong Art Month, Artbridger and Artbridger MENA takes over Soho House Hong Kong with two exhibitions that span the modern and the contemporary, the meditative and the exploratory. Across both presentations, a shared sensibility emerges: an attention to rhythm, structure, and the quiet energy that gives form its life. For many of these artists, Hong Kong represents a rare point of entry to Asian audiences — and for those audiences, a rare opportunity to encounter practices that have long deserved wider attention.

• The Unit and Its Variations — Solo Exhibition of the Late Artist Hussein Madi (21-29 March)

Artbridger and the Hussein Madi Foundation present The Unit and Its Variations, a solo exhibition of the late artist Hussein Madi (1938–2024), curated by Randa Sadaka. One of Lebanon’s most influential modern masters, often called the “Lebanese Picasso”, Madi moved effortlessly between painting, printmaking, and sculpture over six decades. Born in South Lebanon and shaped by years in Rome before returning to Beirut, he built a visual language that feels instantly recognisable. His works have been shown internationally and collected by institutions including the British Museum and the Institut du Monde Arabe, yet his practice remains underrepresented in Asia.

What makes Madi’s work truly lasting is not scale or spectacle, but clarity. He could take a bull, a bird, a figure — even a single curve — reduce it to one “unit,” and then let it unfold through colour, rhythm, and subtle shifts. Variation becomes the message. Repetition becomes a kind of devotion. Structure never cancels emotion. This focused presentation explores that lifelong investigation into geometric form, colour, and the fundamental unit as a building block of visual meaning. It represents a rare opportunity for Hong Kong audiences to encounter the legacy of an artist whose influence across the Arab world and beyond has been profound.

• What Takes Shape — A Collective Exhibition of MENA Artists (21-29 March)

Opening alongside The Unit and Its Variations, What Takes Shape is a collective exhibition curated by Randa Sadaka, gathering five artists whose practices converge around a shared artistic condition. What connects them is a way of working through materials and movement: cloth, toys, weaving, light, routes; gesture, exchange, circulation, ritual. The exhibition brings together Ghanem Hassan, Catherine Karam, Raya Matta, Haytham Sharrouf, and Georges Yammine.

Ghanem Hassan, in his Celebration series, allows forms to rise with quiet strength, expressing identity through memory, experience, and inner presence. Catherine Karam, with Fields of Awakening, transforms geometric weaving motifs into luminous compositions that guide the viewer through heritage, reflection, and renewal. Raya Matta, in Cloth, creates a world of tension and delicate movement, where fabric carries gestures and reveals the rhythms of daily life. Haytham Sharrouf draws inspiration from ancient sea routes between the Far East and the Middle East, exploring how light, textiles, and materials transmit culture, trust, and the spirit of exchange. Georges Yammine, in Toy Land, transforms familiar objects into landscapes of imagination and memory, where play and reflection coexist with clarity and emotion.

• Reverie in Provence — Elsa Jeandedieu x Faustine Badrichani (10-29 March)

Artbridger takes over Soho House Hong Kong with Reverie in Provence, a collective exhibition featuring Hong Kong–based French muralist Elsa Jeandedieu and French artist Faustine Badrichani. Jeandedieu channels movement and landscape into her signature “oscillation” technique, in which textured surfaces appear to vibrate with energy, while Badrichani brings a minimalist practice of sculpture, body prints, and cyanotypes, shaped by an early bond with the natural world. The installation anchors the Green Room and throughout the house for the month of March with corresponding artworks — fragments of the central piece presented at the Soho House Lounge at Art Central — extending the experience into the textures of daily life rather than confining it to white gallery walls.

Beyond the exhibitions, Artbridger presents a multi-day series of talks, tours, and screenings at Soho House Hong Kong, extending the curatorial conversation into dialogue, education, and encounter.

• A guided tour of The Unit and Its Variations and What Takes Shape

Guided tour by Mr. Nidal Madi, Ms. Najla Hraoui Ghorra, and curator Randa Sadaka.

21 March, 7:00 PM

• Literary Salon & Screening

A tribute to two of Hussein Madi’s enduring inspirations: the poetry of Al-Mutanabbi (c. 915–965 AD) and classical Persian music, which he would listen to for hours in his studio to sustain the flow of his practice.

23 March, 5:00 PM

• Talk: Introducing Arab Art to the Asian Market
  A casual conversation between Artbridger Co-Founder & CEO Jason Lung, Artbridger MENA Director Ghanem Hassan, and curator Randa Sadaka on bridging the MENA and Asian art worlds.

24 March, 11:00 AM

For more information and upcoming events, visit artbridger.com/exhibitions.

www.artbridger.com | @artbridgerofficial