The Hegyvidék Gallery’s summer exhibition explores our personal and collective relationship with water through the works of three sculptors: Ágnes Hardi, Marcell Németh, and Dóra Varga. Titled “Water Level Report,” the exhibition presents works and installations that draw inspiration from the world of waterfronts, swimming, beaches, and pools, while also raising questions about relaxation, memory, and the landscape shaped by humans.
The central motif of the exhibition is water as a boundary and a meeting point. It is both a natural element and a cultural space around which communal experiences, summer memories, and personal stories are organized. The works on display do not seek to depict water directly, but rather focus (in part) on the built and material environments that convey the presence of water.
Marcell Németh’s works focus on man–made spaces and structures, as well as the relationship between people and their environment as it is reflected in them. The pier motifs featured in the exhibition evoke both the everyday use of waterfronts and the symbolic meanings of the transition between the shore and open water.
Ágnes Hardi’s works often begin with a reinterpretation of everyday, functional spaces, architectural details, and human–scale environments. The pools featured in the exhibition are sites of recreation, while also reflecting traces of absence, memory, and use. For her, these sites are not merely built structures, but vessels of collective memory, where absence paradoxically becomes one of the strongest forms of presence.
In Dóra Varga’s work, spatial relationships, the sensory quality of objects, and form-building rooted in personal experience play a prominent role. Her pool-inspired objects evoke both the experience of summer vacation and the world of artificially created, controlled natural environments. Her glass works translate the visual, sensory, and optical experience of the water’s surface into the language of sculpture. One of the fascinating paradoxes of Ágnes Hardi and Dóra Varga’s work is that the experience of movement—refractions of light, ripples, and the constant flux of the water’s surface—is captured within a solid, motionless material.
“Water Level Report” presents emblematic summer locations not merely as spaces for recreation, but also as vessels of memory, presence, and absence. The three artists’ distinct approaches converge: their works invite viewers to recall experiences connected to water, while opening up space for the viewer to slow down, linger, and allow personal memories to surface.