BUDAPEST, Hungary — May 27, 2026 One hundred and forty years ago, Carl Benz filed a patent for a three-wheeled Motorwagen, an act that effectively laid the first conceptual layer of modern asphalt. To mark this global anniversary, Mercedes-Benz is staging a massive cultural intervention in Central Europe.
From May 28 to August 30, 2026, the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection will make its historic Budapest debut with POWER LINES an exhibition that trades traditional automotive sentimentality for a raw, critical examination of industrial infrastructure, mobility, and regional identity.
Where the asphalt began: The 1886 Benz Motorwagen. Source: RM Sotheby’s / 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen Recreation | Amelia Island 2019 | RM …
The Intersection of Power and Space
Housed in the Merlin Cultural Square—a brutal, two-story former electrical transformer station in downtown Budapest—the exhibition deliberately positions museum-quality art within a space built to distribute physical power. Curated by Krisztián Gábor Török in partnership with Art is Business, the show maps the complex logistics networks, migration patterns, and industrial corridors that have shaped Central and Eastern Europe over the last several decades.
Rather than arranging the art by sterile galleries, the exhibition flows fluidly across five overlapping structural realities:
- Machine, Still Running: Mechanized fascination meets structural critique. Randomroutines’ Luddite Automaton (2014–2024)—a large-scale steel scaffold powered by a wind turbine ironically uses renewable energy to animate figures performing the machine’s own destruction. It stands in dialogue with the gleaming, industrially manufactured surfaces documented by Benedikt Partenheimer and David Hockney.
- Borders That Factories Drew: Tracking the administrative and physical tolls of production. Sung Tieu’s The Ruling (2024) utilizes hundreds of wooden rulers to contrast pre-colonial units of measurement with French colonial metric decrees, while Doruntina Kastrati’s research reveals the stark skeletal impact on women working repetitive factory shifts.
- The Promise of Form: The fractured utopia of Modernism. Oskar Schlemmer’s Relief H (1919/1959) views the human body through rational, plannable geometry. It finds a tense, modern counterweight in Monika Sosnowska’s buckled, pressurized steel fences that bend under their own structural weight.
- Who Pays for the Light: Exploring hidden energy grids. Paul Kolling’s Energy (2023) inserts an architectural replica of an industrial power building directly into the former transformer station. Nearby, Agnieszka Polska’s video installation The Thousand-Year Plan (2021) projects irreconcilable historical visions of rural electrification on facing screens.
- After Industry: The ecological hangover. Rita Süveges’ paintings map petrochemical trajectories from raw oil spills to Martian mineral extraction. The journey terminates with Noémie Goudal’s film Inhale, Exhale (2021), a sweeping look at glacial and geological timelines that reframes our entire 140-year industrial epoch as a brief, temporary arrangement the earth will outlast.
“With POWER LINES we bring works from the Mercedes‑Benz Art Collection into a multi-layered dialogue with local artistic positions,” notes Dr. Anne Vieth, Head of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection. “The exhibition highlights how industrialization influences us till the present and how these interconnections are reflected within the collection and expanded through new perspectives.”
140 Years. 140 Places.
The Budapest exhibition serves as a core cultural anchor for the global “140 Years of Innovation” initiative. To take the celebration off the gallery walls and back to the tarmac, Mercedes-Benz is currently executing a trans-continental expedition: driving three new S-Class saloons across six continents to 140 historic locations worldwide.
The journey connects the brand’s raw mechanical heritage to its current fleet of intelligent, high-efficiency vehicles including the all-new GLC and the award-winning CLA tracking how the simple act of personal mobility evolved into a global infrastructure network.
Exhibition Logistics
- Venue: Merlin Theater (1052 Budapest, Gerlóczy utca 4. – Entrance from City Hall Park)
- Duration: May 28 – August 30, 2026
- Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM (CEST)
- Admission: Free to the public
The three-month run features an active public program, including specialized guided architectural tours, university design collaborations, and performance events staged alongside the artists of the Örkény Theatre.
