Expertly restored.
In the mid-1980s, when Michal Gabriel became one of the founding members of the postmodern-oriented group Hardheads, the basic orientation of the artist's sculptural work was taking shape. Its basic themes became the human or animal figure, for which he found prefigurations in archaic and mythological imagery at this time. Motifs associated with ancient Egyptian culture, in which human and animal figures were combined into a single being, became one of the important themes of the time. The sculptures of the Egyptian woman (1986) in lime wood or the Ptattolid figures (1985-1987) are among the important works of this period. At the same time, a series of cartoon pastels and watercolours depicting simplified architectural constructions of pyramids, towers or labyrinths, related to the sculptural theme, but realized exclusively in drawing as the final medium, were also produced.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Gabriel experimented with various properties of unconventional sculptural materials ranging from laminate, wire and paper, polyester, as well as traditional wood and clay. In 1992 he created a series of so-called Boxes, small objects, quite untypical for his work.
made of transparent Plexiglas, in which he placed various found objects and materials or natural objects. The Boxes are conceived as spatial objects that cannot be overlooked from a single point of view, and therefore must be turned, rotated and viewed from all sides. Ludvík Hlaváček sees their significance in ""the tension between the identity of personal experience and the experiential 'unfixedness' of linguistic systems"". In the next period, after 2000, Gabriel adopted a unique technology of polyester sculptures with encased walnut shells, which created a unique plastic structure on the surface. By this time, Gabriel was moving towards embracing fundamental and timeless themes with figurative and animal figures, often realized in bronze, created for specific sites in public space.
