As much as the ocean and rivers have long been motifs of classical art, the swimming pool has become a defining image for contemporary artists. Evocative of luxury, leisure and escapism, pools can just as much symbolise isolation, reflection and intimacy; they can be places of public or private, spectacle or solitude. David Hockney’s brightly coloured pools made us want to move to Malibu and jump in, while Larry Sultan transformed them into surreal, quietly unsettling spaces.

Titled For One Solid Time, Wet: The Swimming Pool in the Imagination, a new exhibition at MBAL in Switzerland, dives into the pool’s place in art and popular culture. Co-curated by Lou Stoppard and Federica Chiocchetti, the exhibition brings together painting, photography, film and sculpture by renowned artists from around the world – including David Hockney, Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, Larry Sultan, Caroline Walker, and Elmgreen & Dragset.

Here, the familiar pool becomes much more than somewhere to swim: it’s tied to architecture, modernity and our bodily experiences. That conversation runs throughout the exhibition, which also considers the pool as a political space, where light, bodies, movement and behaviour are carefully regulated – the exhibition notes quote Joan Didion: “A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable.”

The exhibition also launches Wet Proof, a waterproof artist’s book designed to be read in water, much like a child’s bath book. Reimagining the traditional exhibition catalogue, it brings together curators Lou Stoppard and Federica Chiocchetti with works by artist Mary Stephenson.

Marking the exhibition launch, Lou and Federica talked us through some of the key artworks on display.

Bill Viola, The Reflecting Pool, 1977–79

“The Reflecting Pool undoubtedly connects to Bill Viola’s personal history. As a child, he almost drowned during a family vacation. The experience of what he saw underwater – the colours and almost magical imagery – as well as the sense of being held by the water had a lasting impact on his work and imagery.”

Caroline Walker, Study for Fishing, 2017

“The pool is a frequent subject across Caroline Walker’s practice, and she has often used it as a means of exploring class and access: some of her pool paintings depict seemingly luxurious settings – elegant hotels or villas, reclining holidaymakers – others show more communal space: swimming classes, medical pools or crowded public baths.

Many of her paintings extend her explorations of the dynamics of a space where one person is at leisure (or suggested to be at leisure, out of frame, through their possessions), and another is performing service – for example, beauticians wait at their stations, ready to paint nails, women stand at the sink washing plates from dinner. Similarly, various of her pool works mix two alternative realities together: a bather reclines, as someone else cleans.”

Blaise Drummond, Baltic, 2024

“Baltic by Blaise Drummond started as an idea from the process stages of making paintings, looking at the unfinished works and thinking that there is something more maybe to be explored there. Intrigued by an image scraped from the internet of a swanky modernist interior with an ocean view beyond, the artist omits the house and focuses on the presence of a swimming pool next to the sea.

These choices reflect a profound tension between the manifestation of a desire to be immersed in nature – here, the element of water – and the impulse to control nature, making of it a safe, sanitised and contained space as a sort of heritage from the pre-Romantic era, when nature untamed was associated more with fear and repulsion.”

Mary Stephenson, New House, 2025

“The artist Mary Stephenson frequently refers to her figure-less paintings as “portraits”, reflecting the way she tries to capture memory, the unconscious and feelings of desire and longing within each work. The work in the exhibition, New House, merges the blue tones of a clear, inviting swimming pool with the suggestion or hope of a womb-like space, that contains, holds and protects.

To coincide with this exhibition, a special new twist on an exhibition catalogue – available in the bookshop – unites a suite of paintings by Mary Stephenson in a special waterproof artist’s book that can be handled and read in water. The format nods to children’s bath books, reflecting the way memories of childhood often inspire Stephenson’s practice. Within the publication, one sees Stephenson’s subtly nuanced colour palette, which move between intensity and pastels. Her works are accompanied by a new work of fiction, written collaboratively by Candida Desideri and Lou Stoppard, which imagines a dialogue between chemical-infused pool water and natural water.”

For One Solid Time, Wet: The Swimming Pool in the Imagination runs at MBAL October 3, 2026 – February 21, 2027.