Foothill Deli is Dániel Sallay’s first solo exhibition at The Space Art Gallery, presenting the results of his creative process over the past year in the form of an intimate, episodic exhibition with a personal tone. The exhibition’s titular metaphor leads us to a familiar yet imaginary setting: the general store of a small village nestled at the foot of a mountain.
Imagine walking into a small-town general store. The bell above the door rings; the shelves are lined with everyday necessities; and behind the counter, the clerk—who is also the owner—greets the customer like an old friend. This is the kind of place where people shop, chat, gossip, play the lottery, and mail letters; there’s a pub in one corner of the store, and regular village meetings are held here as well; alongside homegrown fruits and vegetables, the meat sandwiches the neighbor lady made at dawn await those stopping by after work or hikers exploring the area. The general store is both a practical place and a community space—a gathering point for the little stories of everyday life.
In this metaphor, the studio also becomes a similar communal space: a place where different thoughts, memories, and forms come together. The eponymous metaphor depicts the studio’s transformation into an imaginary communal space where the sculptures take on a character of their own, are endowed with almost human qualities, and initiate a dialogue with the viewer. Some works evoke the world of dreams and the unconscious; others relate to personal or family experiences; still others reflect on the passage of time, transience, or the changes in human existence.
As a sculptor, Dániel Sallay is interested in the contemporary reinterpretation of classical techniques. In his creative method, the opposing processes of carving and modeling converge: removing material and adding to it, deconstruction and construction, simultaneously shape the form of his works. He currently works primarily with wood, whose organic nature is closely linked to the conceptual layers of his works. His sculptures explore the relationship between the whole and the part, the question of completion and incompleteness, and the dilemmas of the passage of time and its suspension.
For Sallay, abstraction offers a different perspective on reality. It is a visual language capable of revealing everything that lies behind everyday experiences but is difficult to capture in words. *Hegyláb Vegyes* interweaves various stories, moods, and layers of thought. Just as the value of a rural general store is not determined solely by the goods available there, these sculptures also become imbued with meaning through the connections formed between them, the stories they evoke, and the viewer’s personal associations. Form unifies the diversity of the exhibition. For the artist, form itself is the language through which the works speak to the viewer.
Zsófia Kecze