- POWER LINES runs in Budapest from 28 May to 30 August.
- The free exhibition features works by more than 30 artists.
- Themes include industrialisation, migration, modernism, energy and landscape.
Mercedes-Benz is taking its Art Collection to Budapest for the first time, with a new exhibition exploring industry, energy, labour and mobility through works by more than 30 artists.
Called POWER LINES, the exhibition runs from 28 May to 30 August 2026 at Merlin Cultural Square in downtown Budapest. It is free to visit and forms part of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection’s international exhibition programme.
Art meets old industrial bones
The setting is a neat fit. Merlin Cultural Square occupies a former transformer station, giving the exhibition’s themes of production, power and infrastructure a literal backdrop rather than just a clever wall text.
Curated by Krisztián Gábor Török, POWER LINES connects works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection with Hungarian, Central and Eastern European artistic positions.
The show features artists including John M. Armleder, Sylvie Fleury, David Hockney, Robert Longo, Ilona Németh, Rita Süveges and Katalin Kortmann–Járay & Karina Mendreczky.
“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,” said Dr Anne Vieth, Head of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection & Corporate Art Department.
Machines, borders and energy
The exhibition is organised around five linked themes: industrialisation and the machine, migration, modernism, energy and landscape. Mercedes-Benz says these ideas overlap throughout the show rather than sitting in separate rooms.
Among the works is Randomroutines’ Luddite Automaton, a large steel structure powered by a wind turbine, with figures drawn from early labour movement graphics. The irony is fairly sharp: renewable energy animates figures acting out the destruction of the machine itself.
Sung Tieu’s The Ruling uses hundreds of wooden rulers to examine administrative standardisation and colonial measurement systems, while Doruntina Kastrati’s work looks at the physical toll of factory labour.
Free entry, wider programme
Other highlights include Paul Kolling’s Energy, shown inside the former transformer station, and Agnieszka Polska’s video installation The Thousand-Year Plan, which sets two competing visions of electrified modernity against each other.
The exhibition is open Wednesday to Sunday, from 12pm to 6pm CEST. Alongside the main show, visitors can attend guided tours, education programmes, university collaborations and events organised with artists from the Örkény Theatre.
The Mercedes-Benz Art Collection was founded in 1977 and now includes around 3000 works by more than 800 artists.
