Money covered with imagination: Matej Gábriš and his ‘Unfinished Tales 1’
- Henrieta Gábrišová
- Aug 8
- 6 min read
For Matej Gábriš, the ‘pocket-sized’ format of money is his most frequent artistic canvas. And even now, after 40 years, he maintains that it suits him and is enough. His journey from childhood dreams to genuine recognition in the world of security printing design was not paved by a few digital clicks, nor by any targeted activity on social media – which today creates overnight influencers – but by persistent, physical work with the material.
According to his later mentor, Ľubomír Ďurček, creative people are often lazy, and so in the 1980s, in an effort to simplify the constant manual drawing of banknotes, the young Matej carved his first printing block into linoleum. It was the outline of a Yugoslav 500-dinár note, which he’d received from his grandfather when he was six. He made his first trial prints using tempera paints on the floor of the corridor in his prefab block of flats. Now imagine the Petržalka housing estate in the early 1990s – an endless, monochrome mosaic of prefabricated blocks of flats. Nothing particularly inspiring, nor culturally rich. But it was precisely in this dull setting of Bratislava’s concrete landscape that an extraordinary parallel universe was born. A group of teenagers from Petržalka, rather than – or in addition to – simply hanging about, decided to escape into a realm of their own and, with the utmost seriousness, proclaimed a fictional stateless nation – The Fellowship of the Daffodil. This micro-nation had everything that goes with sovereignty: its own runic script, laws, a postal service using Modurit-printed stamps and, above all, its own banknotes, which the boys dutifully covered with an ‘aluminium fund’ made up of saved halier coins.
The new book from ArtBook Garden, “Unfinished Tales 1”, published exactly forty years after Matej’s first surviving drawing of a child’s currency, is a fascinating exploration of his imagination. It opens up old diaries and sketches for us, which, after decades, are brought to life in today’s professional printed form.
Who is Matej Gábriš and what is the Gabrisnote® concept?
For those who don’t know and are visiting our blog for the first time – Matej Gábriš (born in 1977 in Košice, based in Bratislava for many years and now living in Grimstad) is a graphic designer, illustrator and founder of the collectible and artistic concept of fictional banknotes under the GABRISNOTE® brand. His works, colloquially known in Slovakia as ‘gábrišovky’, have gained popularity amongst collectors over more than 15 years, and a community of collectors has formed around them in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, as well as Poland and other countries around the world.
His passion for notaphily (banknote collecting) and the creative process itself has its roots in his childhood. He studied printing, which provided him with detailed technical knowledge of printing processes, typesetting, bookbinding and, in particular, offset printing. It is this technique that he uses as his primary method in the production of his works. He now collaborates with professional security printing firms, and his banknotes incorporate genuine security and protective features: watermarked paper, colour overprinting, microtext, UV-reactive printing, guilloche patterns, dry stamps, holographic foils, and embossing with metallic foils. But what sets them apart from any others within the range of fantasy banknotes available on the market? They are not merely ‘collages’ pieced together from parts of existing banknotes – old or new – from various corners of the world. Nor are they montages of photographic portraits without any hint of drawing or graphic design. On the contrary – they are created as complex works from scratch, and every line and stroke on them is original. Each portrait is a new, unique artistic expression. And many of the micro-inscriptions often contain hidden texts, whole sentences and other meanings. Of course, there are several layers to them, but I’ve already written about that in another blog post.
The book and its purpose:
The book “Unfinished Tales 1” is not just an ordinary album of 25 fictional banknotes. I’ve called it a fascinating archaeology of the imagination. It documents four decades of Matej Gábriš’s creative work and brings to life old diaries, sketches and ‘floppy disks’ (does anyone still remember them?) from his teenage years in Petržalka and the golden era of his own imaginary ‘group’ called The Fellowship of the Daffodil.
Hidden amongst the 25 banknotes inserted are stories that blend nostalgia, youthful naivety, technological experiments and incisive satire. We see their original intent, the original idea, and finally, we see today’s interpretation of them. Using today’s methods and drawing on current experience – that is, the level of mastery of the craft of banknote design.
Here, for example, we find the story of 10 ‘Yugoslav dinars’. They represent a kind of ‘point zero’ in his memories. They are linked to the story of how Matej’s lifelong passion for collecting began. Matej returns to this personal, nostalgic banknote and creates his own ten-dinár note as an expression of gratitude to his grandparents, who introduced him to notaphily.
We also find the ‘Devil’s Crown’ with a face value of 50 million trillion. A banknote with an absurd, hyperinflationary denomination that defies all economic logic. It is a memento of the Narcis Society’s ritual expeditions to the ruins of Pajštún Castle. On Easter Monday, members of the society used to escape into the countryside to get away from the city’s imposed traditions. The figure of the devil on the banknote comes from a small German lithograph that once adorned a gingerbread biscuit. Even such an ordinary ‘motif’ can become part of a work of art – just as the Cubists and, in particular, the Dadaists once did. The 5 Wiener Schnitzel note is a similarly satirical piece. Inspired by Švejk and Jozef Lada, this banknote is a parody of the bureaucracy and pomposity of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
The idea that led to the creation of the five-koruna coin, subtitled ‘The Lonely Pioneer’, had a different origin. If we go back to 1987 – that was precisely when the new Czechoslovak ten-koruna coin by Albín Brunovský came into circulation. Matej was shocked by its colourfulness and illustrative style, and so in 2000 he decided to create his own version of the ten-koruna note, which would resemble the older one from 1960 by Mária Medvecká. However, as he had opted for a face value of 5 korunas (i.e. exactly half that of the original ten-koruna note), he reasoned that it would suffice to feature just one girl on the banknote instead of two. And so the young pioneer remained alone.
The five Gandalf-style runes refer to the original from 1994, which documents the artist’s technological determination. At the time, Matej was experimenting with ‘plaster printing’ – he carved the matrix into a plaster slab. The attempt to print a three-colour design without a press, using such a fragile material, was pure torment. Today’s offset version in the book is thus a ‘technological redemption’ thirty years on.
The 50-koruna ‘D1 Motorway’ note is something of a monument to national frustration. As Matej was born in Košice and has spent a significant part of his life in Bratislava, he feels a personal connection to the unfinished motorway link between Slovakia’s two largest cities. The issue of a commemorative banknote marking the 50th anniversary of the unfinished construction of the D1 motorway (which began in 1972) is a satire on the current reality.
At first glance, the half-koruna, ten-cent and twenty-cent ‘Slovakia’ notes appear to be a sweet, rural celebration of traditions, featuring portraits of a shepherdess and a labourer in the style of Socialist Realism and Yugoslav hyperinflation kitsch. Beneath this beautiful guilloché mask and folk motifs, however, lies an apt reflection of reality – only upon closer inspection does the viewer discover the subtle motif of the taking of a bribe.
Each of the 25 banknotes in the album thus references something from the artist’s past: a specific work, an idea, a sketch, an experience. And each has its own contemporary, original form. Added to this are often witty and amusing details hidden in a layer visible only under UV light. It takes quite some time to explore everything.
It comes across as a genuine reflection on a specific stage of life and as an artistic bridge between the past, the present and… something yet to come. I believe that perhaps something will even remain.
A final wish
May the book succeed in finding its readers. May they return to it again and again, and may it entertain, surprise or charm them.
To the creator of the artistic concept and the works in the book, I wish that on his future artistic journey he may always encounter the muse he needs at that moment, and that he may continue to enjoy it. For at least another 40 years!