An out of the league designer and artist, Sruli Recht, born in Jerusalem, Israel, studied in Australia, moved to London and finally based himself in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the northern Europe. Getting into the mind of Recht, I intepret, that one cannot categorize his work, for a simple reason that he has always done things that are not close to normality.
He is the only designer who has actually used his own skin for one of his art pieces. He removed a 4 by 0.4 inch skin from his abdomen while he was awake, got it tanned, with hair intact and mounted it to a gold ring. As some of the writers have rightly put it “he donated a piece of himself for art.” But not everyone has the same appreciation for his work, as many people feel such products are repugnant and the price he is selling them at is extravagant.
Not to mention, he captured the entire process live, below you can watch the video:
As bizarre the idea of human flesh on a ring may seem, what surpasses the human imagination, is the concept of sharkskin gloves lined with thousands of thorns slanted inwards.
Shark skin gloves with thorns lined inside
You can put on the gloves once , only once because if you want to remove them, you have to cut them off or else you rip your hands. With such a line of products to his name, I am not appalled if bloggers infamously quote him as: “Fashion’s Maddest Man.”
His urge to do different things in the most different possible ways has always landed him in trouble. The concept of making an umbrella with a knuckle duster handle, as he called it The Umbuster, got him charged of importation, manufacturing and selling of prohibited weapons. Though, at the end he managed to win the case, with court declaring that the Umbuster is not a weapon.
No matter how quirky his work may appear to anyone, it has always earned him recognition. No wonder his store “Vopnaburio” has been selected by the Wallpaper magazine, among the ten most interesting shops in the world in 2010 with the likes of Hermes in New York and Stella McCartney store in Milan.
An in-depth research on this man leaves you wondering, what to refer him as because his work has always been swinging like a pendulum between art, design and fashion. Before writing this article I didn’t have the slightest of the clue of who Sruli Recht is, so much so that didn’t even know how to spell his name.
But now without any hesitation I would say that despite all the unconventional things he does, I have developed a liking for him when in one of his interviews he unperturbed says “screw those steps; I don’t have the time for them.” The intellect he portrays, leaves you spell bound.
His work is truly a piece of art, for art is not only to provoke pleasant emotions: art in its every form is a medium of expression and Sruli Recht uses this medium quite well, literally.
