Presented at the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, Czech Republic, Abysslantis marks a new chapter in Czech sculptor Ondřej Oliva’s career. Conceived as an immersive journey beneath the ocean’s surface, the exhibition brings together a monumental installation and two bronze sculptures that explore the relationship between time, nature, and the traces left by human civilizations.
An Exhibition Designed as a Dive
With Abysslantis, Ondřej Oliva presents more than a new body of sculptures. He invites visitors to experience the sensation of descending beneath the ocean’s surface.
The six monumental sculptures of BENTHORELIC, together with two bronze works, emerge from a dark blue floor evoking the seabed. A soundscape inspired by low-frequency recordings from the deep ocean accompanies the journey, while an audiovisual projection extends the feeling of immersion. The exhibition unfolds like a gradual descent into a submerged world, culminating in a moment of discovery.
Before focusing on the sculptures themselves, visitors are invited to experience what the artist describes as “a moment of discovery”: the instant when the silent remains of a contemporary Atlantis slowly emerge from the depths.
The Remains of a Reimagined World
At the heart of the exhibition is BENTHORELIC, a monumental installation composed of six sculptures in nickeled aluminum and elox aluminum.
The title is a word created by the artist, combining benthos, the ecosystem of the ocean floor, and relic. The resulting Benthorelics are imagined as fragments of architecture and human-made structures that have gradually merged with marine life, becoming new ecosystems where human history and the natural world can no longer be separated.
Cast from weathered wood, the sculptures preserve every crack, fracture and trace of erosion. The mussel colonies that appear to spread across their surfaces do not symbolize disappearance, but transformation.
As Ondřej Oliva explains: “I wanted to stop time and capture the moment when decay freezes, leaving the object preserved forever.”
A New Chapter in Ondřej Oliva’s Practice
While Abysslantis introduces a new imaginary world, it also continues a line of inquiry that has shaped Ondřej Oliva’s work for many years.
As Ivan Bergmann, Curator of the Sculpture Collection at the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín, writes: “The clash between the organic and the artificial has long been at the center of sculptor Ondřej Oliva’s focus.” Throughout the exhibition, formerly functional objects gradually become the foundation for new forms of life. As Bergmann further observes: “Objects that were once dead and functional are transformed in the depths into an oasis of newly thriving life.”
A More Personal Reflection
Yet Abysslantis is about more than the fate of objects or civilizations. Beneath its imagined Atlantis lies a more personal meditation on the passing of time.
Reflecting on the origins of the project, Ondřej Oliva explains: “Once you turn forty, you start thinking a bit differently. I wanted to stop time and capture the moment when decay freezes, leaving the object preserved forever.”
This desire to suspend a fleeting moment runs throughout the exhibition. By casting decaying wood in metal, Oliva performs an almost paradoxical act: giving lasting form to something whose very nature is to disappear.
That is perhaps where the true strength of Abysslantis lies. Beneath the imagery of a submerged landscape and a reimagined Atlantis, the exhibition ultimately reflects on our relationship with time, mortality, and the unique ability of art to preserve what would otherwise be lost.
Practical Information
Ondřej Oliva: Abysslantis (solo exhibition)
Regional Gallery of Fine Arts
Zlín, Czech Republic
August 12 – October 25, 2026
