ABOUT
As renowned a hair artist as he has become, Bob Recine is first and foremost a visual constructionist and fine artist. Through his longstanding fascination with high magic, he has been able to traverse the divide between art and commerce as few hairdressers in the history of fashion have managed to do.
Recine makes clear the abstract: solving and then simplifying complexity, without ever endangering the mysticism inherent in his study of it. He takes the most basic forms, and transforms them so as to reveal their true nature. Hair, along with the head itself, serves merely as a medium — a single component — through which he conceives, constructs, and then asks one to consider what is it that he is truly looking at. Pieces which showcase this practice of transcendence include intricate manipulatives of matchsticks, corporeal constructions created with hairpins, and new geometries illuminated in such varied media as sculptural collage and wire latticework.
Nevertheless, while he embraces the pleasure to be taken in defying circumstance and is unafraid to undergo tectonic shifts as he senses their need from himself and within the industry, Recine remains an elegant figure — a so called 'ambience-maker', calling to mind the Parisian refinement with which his craft is so imbued. His inimitable body of work reflects this same finesse, which he has used in concert with such prodigious fashion and fine art photographers as Mario Sorrenti, Paolo Roversi, Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, and Irving Penn. Recine's inventiveness has also proved integral to constructing the iconic and imaginative image of influential cultural figures as Lady Gaga, as well as to his collaborations with fine artists, Vanessa Beecroft and Bjarne Melgaard.
— Lauren Isabeau
January 2016