POWER LINES. An Exhibition of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection in Budapest

• From May 28 to August 30, 2026: Mercedes-Benz Art Collection for the first time in Budapest
• The exhibition POWER LINES connects works of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection with local artistic practices
• Works of 30 artists such as John M. Armleder, Sylvie Fleury, David Hockney, Katalin Kortmann–Járay & Karina Mendreczky, Robert Longo, Ilona Németh and Rita Süveges

From May 28 to August 30, 2026, visitors to the POWER LINES exhibition can experience the works of various internationally renowned artists. The works are presented in the two-storey building of the Merlin Cultural Square in downtown Budapest. As part of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection's international exhibition program, POWER LINES connects global industrial contexts with artistic perspectives emerging from Hungary and the Central and Eastern European region – curated by Krisztián Gábor Török. The exhibition features art pieces by over 30 artists such as John M. Armleder, Sylvie Fleury, David Hockney, Katalin Kortmann–Járay & Karina Mendreczky, Robert Longo, Ilona Németh and Rita Süveges.

“With POWER LINES we bring works from the Mercedes‑Benz Art Collection into a multi-layered dialogue with local artistic positions. The exhibition highlights how industrialization influences us till the present — and how these interconnections are reflected within the collection and expanded through new perspectives.”
Dr. Anne Vieth, Head of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection & Corporate Art Department

POWER LINES explores the impact of infrastructures related to industry, energy, labour, and mobility

The industrial history of the exhibition venue lends further resonance to the exhibition’s themes. The old transformer station brings questions of production, distribution, and power into the exhibition itself. POWER LINES deliberately engages in a focused and critical examination of the impacts of the industrial revolution, reflecting the transformations that have affected Hungary as well as the Central and Eastern European region over recent decades. Industrial production, logistics networks, and technological systems have created opportunities, defined aesthetics, and created new forms of mobility. At the same time, they have embedded territories and communities in complex infrastructures. Over 30 participating artists trace the routes along which people, materials, energy and goods flow across Central and Eastern Europe. Their works explore themes such as labour migration and working conditions, administrative systems and the spatial logic of modernist design — exploring how industrial corridors and regulatory frameworks shape both individual and collective realities. The presentation moves through five interconnected themes — industrialization and the machine, migration, modernism, energy, and landscape. The art works do not follow this sequence room by room — themes cross, overlap, and return.

The exhibition creates dialogues between works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection and Hungarian as well as Central and Eastern European artistic positions

Machine, Still Running: For instance, Randomroutines' Luddite Automaton (2014–2024) is a large-scale steel scaffolding with figurative scenes drawn from early labour movement graphics. These are set in motion by a wind turbine at the top. Thus, renewable energy ironically powers figures that enact the machine's own destruction. Alongside it, Benedikt Partenheimer and David Hockney approach the machine through fascination: gleaming, industrially manufactured surfaces; the car as one defining object of industrial modernity; the steering wheel “assembled” from the driver's own perspective.

Borders That Factories Drew: Sung Tieu's The Ruling (2024) spreads across the gallery space with hundreds of wooden rulers. While the bottom row features a traditional unit of measurement from pre-colonial French Indochina (present-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), the top row displays the altered metric imposed by a French colonial decree in 1897. In this installation, the impact of administrative standardization becomes visible. Doruntina Kastrati, in turn, follows in her works the bodily cost: research into the women workers of a lokum factory in Prizren reveals that almost one-third undergo knee replacement surgery — standing labour and repetitive rhythms leave their marks in bone.

The Promise of Form: Modernism was never unambiguous. Oskar Schlemmer's Relief H (1919/1959) holds this ambiguity: the human body in modular, plannable geometry — as a utopian proposition, according to which rationalized form should express equality. The unfulfillment of this hope made humanity more complex, not less. Monika Sosnowska answers under structural pressure: steel fences, bent and buckled, as if suffering under their own weight. At the same time, the ideal forms remain legible within the damage.

Who Pays for the Light: Paul Kolling's Energy (2023) comprises an architectural replica of an industrial energy building and questions the hidden infrastructures of the energy market. By exhibiting this expansive artwork in a former transformer station, it brings the history of this place into focus. In her video installation The Thousand-Year Plan (2021), Agnieszka Polska presents two irreconcilable visions of the future on facing screens: communist engineers electrifying the Polish countryside on one side, anti-communist partisans in the surrounding forests on the other — two worlds that cannot see each other at the same moment.

After Industry: In her paintings Rita Süveges traces the petrochemical scenarios from oil spill to Martian extraction - an economy that does not end but relocates, leaving its marks long after the industry moves on. The last room belongs to Noémie Goudal: Inhale, Exhale (2021) moves through ice age formations and geological surfaces shaped over millennia. In extension to everything that precedes it — the rulers, the factory floors, the bent steel, the energy grids — Goudal's film offers not consolation but proportion: industrial modernity appears, in this light, as one brief arrangement among many the earth has hosted and will outlast.

Participating Artists

Mustafah Abdulaziz, John M. Armleder, Jakub Choma, Dávid Demjanovič & Jarmila Mitríková, Marta Dyachenko, Ágnes Eperjesi, Sylvie Fleury, Noémie Goudal, David Hockney, Doruntina Kastrati, Stefan Knauf, Paul Kolling, Katalin Kortmann–Járay & Karina Mendreczky, Diana Lelonek, Robert Longo, Áron Lődi, Elisa Manig, Dániel Máté, Ilona Németh, Benedikt Partenheimer, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Agnieszka Polska, Charlotte Posenenske, Randomroutines, Moritz Riesenbeck, Peter Roehr, Julika Rudelius, Șerban Savu, Oskar Schlemmer, Selma Selman, Santiago Sierra, Monika Sosnowska, Susanne Stövhase, Rita Süveges, Sung Tieu, Claudia Wieser, Ben Willikens, Yin Xiuzhen.

Exhibition Information and Public Program

Venue: Merlin Theater (1052 Budapest, Gerlóczy utca 4.) — Entrance from the City Hall park.
Exhibition run: May 28 – August 30, 2026
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 12 am – 6 pm (CEST)

The exhibition is free to visit. As part of its commitment to fostering dialogue POWER LINES is accompanied by a dynamic public program. During the opening hours, visitors can take part in special guided tours, educational programs, university collaboration events, and, among others, events organized with the artists of the Örkény Theatre.

For more information about the events, please visit the website of Mercedes-Benz Studio Budapest.

The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection

The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection was founded in 1977 and is now one of the important European corporate collections of museum quality and international reputation. The collection includes around 3,000 works by more than 800 artists. It focuses on abstract-constructive pictorial concepts and critical-engaged art, as well as representative works and commissions on themes such as automobility and design.

The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection embodies Mercedes-Benz’s broad social commitment to culture and education. With the art collection, the company aims to create a recognisable benefit for the common good and to respond responsibly to social issues and developments. It presents its holdings within the company, at associated locations and in museums — ensuring that the collection is accessible to a wide audience.

More information on the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection is available on the internet at mercedes-benz.art.

About Mercedes-Benz Hungária Kft.

Mercedes-Benz Hungary unveils the Mercedes-Benz Studio Budapest series - an immersive platform spanning multiple locations and several months, designed to bring the brand closer to people’s everyday lives. As part of the global “140 Years of Innovation” anniversary initiative, the project transforms Budapest into a dynamic intersection of mobility, culture, and style.
The Mercedes-Benz Studio is more than a series of events - it represents a new way of connecting with customers. It translates the brand’s message into a tangible urban experience, where innovation, design, and performance become an integral part of daily life.

About Art is Business (Cooperating Partner)

The exhibition is curated by Krisztián Gábor Török for the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection in cooperation with Art is Business as project management partner. Art is Business is a company and a platform on which players from the corporate, private and artistic scene can meet, and collaborations can be created from the knowledge shared here, so that society can get a healthy and high-quality spiritual vision of the future, and the topic of sustainable culture can reach as many people as possible.

Contact:

Mihály Ferencsik, +36 70 475 5079, mihaly.ferencsik@mercedes-benz.com

Silke Mockert, +49 160 86 80 502, silke.mockert@mercedes-benz.com

Mercedes‑Benz Anniversary Year “140 Years of Innovation”

Since Carl Benz filed the patent for the first automobile 140 years ago and Gottlieb Daimler built his motorised carriage shortly afterwards, Mercedes‑Benz has dedicated itself to constantly innovate and to create the world’s most desirable cars for customers. This ambition has driven every innovation – from the world's first automobile in 1886 to today's intelligent and safe electric vehicles, like the all-new GLC and the award-winning all-new CLA. With the new S‑Class, the company continues the biggest product launch programme in its history. With its passion for performance and pioneering power, excellence and an unwavering commitment to customer service, the brand has consistently shaped the future of mobility.

Mercedes‑Benz is celebrating 140 years of innovation by driving three new S‑Class saloons on a trans-continental journey to 140 locations worldwide. Each place highlights the brand’s technology, heritage, pioneering spirit and worldwide presence. Along the way customers, fans and colleagues will get to join in the celebrations - on an epic adventure that will run until October. Follow the “140 Years. 140 Places” drive across six continents on our “140 years of innovation | Mercedes‑Benz Media” special and via the Mercedes‑Benz Community.