Parallel Remains

Text: Svetlana Malina

 

In her solo exhibition at Umrian Gallery, Lenka Glisníková presents a series of transparent plexiglass objects arranged into physical compositions within the gallery space. Individual elements function as translucent image layers that overlap, refract, and transform as the viewer moves through the space. The installation does not produce a closed image but rather a situation in which meaning emerges through spatial arrangement and embodied experience.

 

Layered visual structures appear on the plexiglass panels, derived from photographs of materials commonly perceived as surplus or discarded. From these found fragments, the artist constructs temporary “DIY still lifes,” which she subsequently photographs and digitally multiplies. The original material thus undergoes a series of transformations: from physical arrangement into image, from image into digital composition, and back again into a material—yet transparent—form.

 

The resulting objects are not documentation of existing things but records of imaginary forms that have never existed. Glisníková engages with the aesthetics of the digital environment, where images can be endlessly layered, copied, and modified, translating this principle into the physical space of the gallery. The transparency of plexiglass functions not only as a material quality but as a conceptual tool: it enables the interpenetration of images, their destabilization, and mutual ambiguity.

 

The installation has a pronounced, almost sculptural character. The objects are mounted on the wall as autonomous forms whose meaning shifts depending on lighting conditions and the viewer’s position. Yet their origin remains firmly rooted in photography and in an initial effort to document and examine material. The glossy, technologically precise surface of plexiglass stands in tension with the visual origins of the images, which stem from fragments of materials considered worthless. This contrast—between smooth, almost sterile transparency and traces of overlooked material—constitutes the central field of meaning of the exhibition.

 

Each object also operates as a self-contained micro-world in which various material narratives, relationships, and tensions can be observed. The viewer may read the individual layers as fragments of imaginary landscapes, laboratory scenarios, or archaeological findings from a parallel reality. The installation thus offers a plurality of interpretations: rather than conveying a single dominant message, it creates a field of open structures where fascination with material, its documentation, and its digital transformation into new, hybrid forms of existence converge.

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Lenka Glisníková (*1990) develops a research-oriented artistic practice in which she questions the ontological definition of photography. She systematically disrupts its flatness, digitally manipulates the photographic image, and translates it into spatial objects and installations. The material and visual qualities of her work expand the field of photography toward intermedial and sculptural forms while deepening its conceptual potential.

 

She is the recipient of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award (2023) and a laureate of Czech Grand Design in the Photographer of the Year category (together with Karolína Matušková as the duo Shotby.us) in 2020 and 2023.

 

In recent years, her work has been presented in exhibitions including SYMBIOSIS 3.0: ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR as part of the Berlín Model group pop-up during Hong Kong Art Week 2026; Conversations on Reproductions: I. Lick the Finger, Turn the Page (Galerie Kurzor, 2026); The Landscape of Absence (MeetFactory, 2025); House Party! (SIC, Helsinki, 2024); and Group Therapy: Collections in Dialogue (Prague City Gallery, 2024). Recent solo exhibitions include Sunken Streams (Galerie NoD, 2025) and Moment of Seclusion Over the Horizon (Galerie Kostka, Prague, 2023). In 2024, she completed a residency at Residency Unlimited in New York

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