Sruli Recht-Icelandic designer

[BerlinRocks]

Process...

Like most:
I began drawing because I wanted to put a window in the paper. So I could see through it. And so it wouldn’t be flat anymore.
I began sculpting because I wanted a shark.
I began sewing because I couldn’t find clothing that I could be through. So I wouldn’t be flat anymore.

Thus, it could be said… I am into making potential un-realities.

I work because without it I lose my sense of permanence… and fade out. I become a permeable fog. When I work I am a rolling gurney moving through a solid painted wall. Broken and cracked ideas, jagged unmatched edges that fit into polarised opposites.

To take an idea out of my head and fashion its form is purely surrealistic... and it gives me the most real experiences.

For when I work I am plugged in to the infinite awkwardness that is raw possibility
I’m only really part of the world when I’m working. The rest of the time I slip out of line.
I work because it makes things real. It makes that black humour sweat itself out, it makes my hallucinations something tangible - and just one less thing that is stuck in my head.
When I work my bodily functions stop, I lose the sense of hunger, exhaustion, soreness and time.
I work because it makes me real and lets me present interior reality and exterior reality as two elements in the process of unification.

When I work I feel as though I can improve the ugliness of any one thing and allow it to evolve into something beautiful... more by accident than intention, like smashing a car so often that it becomes a beautiful cube.. I don’t aim for intentional beauty.

A lot of time is spent on each garment. It feels like sculpture.

When I walk around I see abandoned flashes of things that didn’t exist, and were found on the periphery of my future memory echoes. Its like I’m reaching through a veil, rifling around in someone else’s dormant history and pulling them out to here, like an eel from a lake, to compound elements that haven’t happened with the last waves of those that did.

I lean more on the scars of familiarity, fabrics that trigger, graphic button layouts that pull at its history, I apply distorted half memories, broken ideals, and distracted murmurs of dusty old conversions.
And redefine them in a garment that you know you haven’t seen, but feels too familiar to be new.

Mostly, I'm interested in the character of clothing. The personalitly it reads. When I design I give to my work a history, an emotion, and a personality… in short, its own permanence. The life of things is extremely relevant. Whether a coat or sculpture… I want to show its past before it was real to you… and the future it will lead through.

 

[softgrey]

he must not sleep...
he has obviously spent a LOT of time thinking about this...
which makes me think he isn't getting a lot of ZZZZZZZZZZ's...


...

 

[SomethingElse]

Phenomenal work, even though his use of exotic animal parts is prohibitive for me. Thanks for posting everything, kiddokiddo. This article from 2005 is a fun read.

Tailor-made art suits Sruli - Janice Breen Burns meets a designer whose is determined to take creative risks.

THERE'S a touch of the archetypical "mad professor" about Melbourne artist and designer Sruli Recht - and not just in the shock of kinked copper hair that's become his signature.

Like many of his contemporaries, flying in for the Experimenta exhibition of technological art, his passion for work borders on the anti-social: "I just don't hang out much with people who are not creative any more." Recht, 26, has his clothing designs (his principal source of income), his writing (prose and lyrics, including a musical he co-wrote with composer Ben Frost), and his music (clarinet and guitar).

They form an ever-expanding internal universe he calls "my art". And it's by no means harmonious. Recht wrestles incessantly with issues brought up by his work. "I've found that creativity and confidence are inherently linked." No mystery there, but how do you maintain the extreme confidence that enables risk, that produces worthy art? "How do you always have absolute confidence in your work?" He doesn't.

His daily dilemmas aren't always so esoteric: "Last year all I did was think about money; every hour. It got in the way of creativity. I just had to stop, just stop thinking about it."

If he hadn't, the most ambitious project yet in his short, firecracker of a career might not have gone off.

Until September 24, he will exhibit two 1.5-metre high holograms - slow-motion images of himself and artist partner Martina Mrongovius, wearing his clothing designs, in Experimenta's "Vanishing Point" exhibition of illusionist artworks being held across Melbourne until early next month.

Recht's project sprang from a small, naive flash; "We were sitting in the Tate museum (London) and it was just; 'That's it! That was where I wanted to be'. My ideal medium is not a retail outlet. I want my work seen in a museum, in a gallery."

Back in Melbourne, he and holographer Mrongovius worked with photographer Mark Ruff, who uses an array of 50 still cameras rigged along an elegant arc of photographic tripods. They fire off digital images, one after another, at nano-second intervals. The result was a short film for the pair's hologram. Recht explains the technique as similar to the slow motion scenes from the film The Matrix, in which the camera appears to track around characters and objects within a frozen, three-D space.

Recht and Mrongovius had their giant, 1.5-metre film processed by a US Company, Holographics North, then 3-D animation effects were seamlessly incorporated in London by artist Ged Wright, who worked on Batman and Harry Potter.

The film depicts some of the clothes Recht labours over in the airy little studio he shares in Collingwood. At the moment, he's surviving on the income from made-to-measure, tailored clothing and the odd consulting job; currently with new skatewear label Insomnia. But, he insists he's not boxed into the fashion industry. "Intellectually, clothing makes a lot of sense to me but, that's just at the moment."

In his studio, Recht's archive from his final year at RMIT and a rack of more recent clothes (I hesitate to call them "fashion" - they are simply too "Sruli") are beautiful evidence of his obsessive nature and what he cheerfully calls his "anally retentive approach to quality".

A felted wool suit he designed for a 19-year-old's upcoming wedding is flawless. He has laboured 148 hours on it, welcomed the fascinated client for countless fittings and will eventually bill the lad for more than $6000.

"I haven't used an overlocker in so long," he says, and shows me tracks of tiny, flat, perfectly even hand stitches.

Recht describes his psycho-analytical approach to design; "I need to divine the character of the person who will wear the garment: what do they think? Feel? How will they wear it? Where? What do they like? What do they do?"

Then, he begins: side-profile sketch, topographical sketches from every angle, calico toiles to nut out how it will work on the body: "How it will envelope".

From these complicated beginnings, he makes equally complicated trousers and jackets, shirts and dresses that are compelling in their visual simplicity.

Recht was born in Jerusalem to a German/English mother and African/Lithuanian father. He was the only redhead his family is aware of in at least four generations. He lives in Melbourne, near his father, brother and half-sister, and describes himself as "spiritually, not traditionally" Jewish.

He is vaguely embarrassed, but not falsely modest about his leanings to genius: "Maybe it'd look better on paper if I was a dropout . . ." He realises his options are unfolding fast and, 21/2 years out of his RMIT's bachelor of arts fashion degree, he's relishing that rare feeling of being limitlessly creative and beholden to no one.

What is it?

Experimenta Vanishing Point is a major exhibition of new technological media and screen-based work by 27 local and overseas artists from countries including the US, Korea, Japan, China, South America and France.

It will tour nationally next year.

Projects, forums, artists' talks, screenings and performances were conceived to intrigue and entertain, and will be open to the public until October 2 in various venues and open spaces throughout Melbourne.

Some events are free; tickets for others cost $5 to $13.

Venues include the National Gallery of Victoria, Gertrude Street Gallery, Victorian College of the Arts, BlackBox at the Arts Centre, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Unfurl: Project, by Sruli Recht and physicist-holographer Martina Mrongovius explores olde-world humanistic characters suspended in a medium of space and light. It is one of 12 works at the Margaret Lawrence Galleries, the VCA, 40 Dodds Street, Southbank, until September 24, open noon-5pm Wednesday to Sunday. Entry free. Phone: 9685 9400.For general information go to http://www.experimenta.org For details of the holographic project by Recht and Mrongovius, to www.srulirecht.com

theage.com.au . published September 2005

 

[softgrey]

it would be awesome to see that holographic work


thanks for the article...

 

[kiddokiddo]

BerlinRocks, thanks for posting the articles and his infos from his website...and how could I miss the reference of Carol Christian Poell?

There's a few other images from his website that I missed

srulirecht

 

[kiddokiddo]

The complexity of his tailoring is absolutely mind-blowing yet it's minimal at its best

 

[kiddokiddo]

^Inside out

 

[kiddokiddo]

Mens structural jacket

 

[kiddokiddo]

Sliced vest

 

[kiddokiddo]

Dropped line skirt

Mens trousers

 

[kiddokiddo]

Constricted suit

 

[kiddokiddo]

^Details

 

[kiddokiddo]

^Inside out

 

[kiddokiddo]

Terminal knot trousers

 

[kiddokiddo]

Photograhers photos

srulirecht

 

[whitecollargirl]

Sruli Recht Shoes and Accessories
HELD BY

Iceland
Reykjavík - Liborius



MUNDI AW 07
HELD BY

Iceland
Reykjavík - Kron Kron

France
Paris - Kokon To Zai

UK
London - Concrete
- Beyond The Valley

USA
New York - Dernier Cri
Los Angeles - Welcome Hunters

Japan
Tokyo Laforet - H.P.FRANCE exclusive
Kumamoto City - Isis Martha

Italy
Bologna - Zoraido

Germany
Berlin - F95

ah thank you so much for the info, im heading to berlin soon and i absolutely cant wait!

 

[softgrey]

the women's stuff is a bit weak imo...
the tailored suiting is executed well...but it almost looks painful...
like he said- his blood is in there...
and i can see it...

but i dont' know if i like that to be honest...
i would like to see more joy and exhuberance...
more freedom rather than such constricted pieces...

and he seems to have forgotten about the fact that women have breasts...
those re-structured vests do not take that into account in the patterns and as a result -the fit is awkward...and looks really uncomfortable to wear...

but if he wants to make things that just go in museums that no one will ever wear...
then i guess that isn't so important to him...
...

 

[clay]

OMG this is great! But I almost wish I had not seen this. Similar concepts and attitude with his menswear that I am exploring to some degree. I love his work. Beautiful inside and out! DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[iyemstoopid]

the inside out suit is absolutely fantastic

 

[Scott]

i love those first two jackets recently posted on this page...first is a bit edwardian in shape.

and does anybody else see an a.f. vandevorst influence? i mean those breastplates are very much like the one's they did some years ago....only their's i think had a shape for actual breasts(realising softie's observation)...but even in some of the experimental,crisp cutting in those trousers and shirts it's very evident who he's looked up to. but agreeing with softie,unlike a.f. or margiela,it can be awfully severe at times. even the boudicca designers add a bit of something soft into their structural metropolis.