





Márton Nemes
Metropolitan Baroque
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| Editor(s) | Wilko Austermann, Hanna Claris, Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst |
| Author(s) | Wilko Austermann, Hanna Claris, Ying Kwok |
| Design | Nóra Kaszanyi |
| Size | 23 x 30 cm |
| Cover | Hardcover |
| Pages | 136 |
| Illustrations | 99 |
| Language(s) | German, English |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-279-2 |
Hungarian artist Márton Nemes (born 1986, lives in New York and Budapest) creates spaces for bodily perception at the intersection of abstract painting and sculpture, digital culture, techno, and urbanity. In his radical installations of powder-coated steel with embedded speakers and an LED screen, visitors encounter light and sound elements that expand into a pulsating environment. Nemes’s immersive, multisensory spaces reflect the rapid acceleration, fragmentation, and technology’s superimposition of our present, while simultaneously allowing for the experience of self-determined fluidity and contemplation. This volume documents Nemes’s comprehensive exhibition Metropolitan Baroque at the Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst (Museum of Non-Objective Art) featuring works from 2019 to 2025.
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