Deformed by rubber
The crumpled heroes become the protagonists of the tragic epic of the high-tech era, and can also be perceived as enigmatic contemporary self-portraits. Szabó lives and works in Budapest, in a studio located in the Százados Street artists’ colony, where he himself was born. His characteristic sculptures are regularly presented in both group and solo exhibitions domestically.
Szabó Menyhért
Szabó Menyhért is one of the most distinctive representatives of the generation of Hungarian sculptors that emerged in the late 2000s. His work has revitalized the vocabulary of representing faces and nudes in classical sculpture by incorporating the crumpled texture of rubber casing and industrially colored surfaces, reimagining the dramatic figures of ancient mythology through a contemporary lens.
Born into an artistic family in Budapest, Szabó Menyhért was drawn to shaping plastic forms from an early age. After a period in Antwerp, he graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2018, specializing in sculpture. Rooted in a process-based approach, his practice employs recurring motifs and self-referential elements, organizing works into series and thematic units. His early works magnified the human head to monumental scale, combining the raw black materiality of industrial rubber with classically inspired faces that radiate heroism.