Mgr. Martin Šugár PhD, court expert in fine arts
Perhaps these words can be used to evaluate the artistic quality of the artwork created by Michael Gavrieli (born August 1982): “only in part is he self-taught”. He never completed academic education, nor even attended an art school. His interest was in beauty, and he felt the need to express himself, to capitalize creatively on his talent, and this all brought him to private courses where he learned encaustic art (a 2,500-year-old technique for making hot beeswax) and took up several gold-plating courses and experimented with other 24k gold materials as he developed a passion for working with gold. These ancient techniques opened the door to his intuitive development of color composition that hardly reflects what you see visually.
When observing how Gavrieli composes his colors, it is critically important to view the sustained contemplation and peaceful mediation, releasing your mind from strictly rational pondering. It is as if he is creating mandalas, those ritualistic geometric designs symbolic of the universe. But they are not meant to draw your attention to the transience of the world and the frontiers of human endeavor, but rather for you, like him, to plunge into inner prayer.
Gavrieli’s artworks are not paintings in the true sense; instead, he provides the keys to visual clues that help expose the human mind to the depth of the subconscious. The hypnotic effect of his compositions is intensified by his rich use of gold and silver, which in the true sense of the word transforms them into jewelry integrated into the art. Looking at the image itself, the subtle light of these precious metals evokes the presence of other dimensions.
Gavrieli's encaustics can be seen to document the world in a state of deep mediation, when the material is only limiting and producing a barrier, while the spiritual – though only briefly awakened and not yet fully developed – opens the curtain draping the window to an unknown spiritual world where an essential element is the human soul and falling in love with the powerful and all-knowing Good, the essence of everything.