Have you ever seen a tree with an uncanny, suggestive crevice? Maybe you even considered, “Hm, what if I . . . ?”
Malek Lazri, a professional set designer and viral sex toy artist, has been there.
Consider it a muse for one of his past projects, a Fleshlight whose exterior resembles the rugged texture of tree bark.
“As a young boy, I'd be waiting at the bus stop, and there was this tree at my bus stop that had this knot hole, you know, about waist level,” Lazri tells L.A. TACO.
This particular Fleshlight’s creation was Lazri’s first step in establishing a scavenger hunt of sorts. Following its genesis, Lazri plunged the toy into a knot hole belonging to a tree in Lincoln Heights.
“Have you ever seen where people leave a hammer in a tree, then come back 40 years later and it's grown into the tree?” Lazri says. “Essentially, I just wanted to return it back to the tree. Maybe there's some poetry in there.”
This absurdism is not limited to Fleshlights, despite those being Lazri’s specialty. Also living in his repertoire are a few non-Fleshlight creations: a guillotine bench press, coffin desk chair, and Cheeto-shaped vibrating wands.
Even when Lazri’s work isn’t sexually explicit, there is always an element of shock involved. Obviously, these unique works are the result of Lazri’s dirty brainstorming, but his skills as a seasoned craftsman help bring the ideas to fruition. He also used to build custom furniture for a private collector.
“I kind of just do it for the people these days,” Lazri says. “Obviously, if I don't have a bit of a laugh to myself, then I don't put it out because it's not funny, but I am really thinking about the audience when I'm making these [Fleshlights].”
Alongside Lazri’s viral art projects, he is currently working with a team to design a stage set for a touring musician.
“I've just built a lot of stages for different musical acts or events and stuff like that,” Lazri says. “This is the biggest stage yet, because this is a touring stage for a famous musician, and so it'll be a stadium stage.”
While now based in Nashville, Lazri’s roots are in Los Angeles. He was born in Santa Monica and got his start in production design here in L.A. Whether or not he would move back, Lazri tells L.A. TACO he would, “if he was hecka rich.”
“If you're not freaking balling in Los Angeles, like you're kind of squalling [living in squalor],” Lazri says.
As of now, Lazri has shaped a former mechanic shop into his current art studio, crafting lewd, tongue-in-cheek projects amongst a hydraulic lift and other remnants of the space’s past. According to Lazri, he won’t be there for much longer, adding to the list of studios which he’s occupied throughout his career.
Over the past eight years, Lazri has had six different studios in different parts of the country, from Nevada to Tennessee.
“I think the best places to make art are the more industrial places,” Lazri says. “Like where you can have access to a myriad of different, sort of, tool suppliers and material suppliers, and even, like, people that you can subcontract to do certain things. So I think an industrial city like L.A. was pretty good for that. Vegas wasn't horrible. I found probably the best of cultures I've ever met in my life in Las Vegas.”
Some of Lazri’s most popular Fleshlights have garnered over tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram. Coincidentally, many of these parody familiar favorites from the cultural zeitgeist, past and present.
Part of the subversion in Lazri’s work comes from the complete debauchery of Fleshlight-ifying characters like Thomas the Tank Engine and Plankton from “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
“All of them are platinum silicone, so they are all food-safe and, technically, they’re actual sex toy material, so you can have sex with them for sure,” Lazri says.
Beyond beloved characters, Lazri also parodies well-known brands like Scrub Daddy and Supreme.
“I'm not the expert in this, but we learned in school, you're protected by art laws and parody laws,” Lazri says. “You can do anything you want, as long as you don't mass produce . . . To be honest, a lot of brands are very interested and actually love it, but can't exactly partner with me a lot of times because it would affect their target audience. Like, Scrub Daddy, for instance. I don't know that the middle-aged sort of housewife is going to be down with that. That’s their demographic.”
The only avenues of art that Lazri considers off-limits are those that are illegal, aka the personal requests he gets through social media to create sex toys of characters who are young girls. Lazri is firmly opposed to taking suggestions for his artwork in the first place, but that does not stop users from asking for creations so obscene that Lazri blocks them.
“No freaking Dora the Explorer, you creep. Like, you're not getting it,” Lazri says about users he believes “should probably be in prison.” (Doesn’t it feel good to know that your favorite sex toy artist has solid morals?)
“Always grown-up characters, if it's going to be a character,” he says. “I have a lot of fun with the non-character, sort of inanimate objects, I think are really fun.”
And, of course, the soundtrack bumping along as Lazri crafts his newest paraphernalia includes classical music, old country, and Enya. Some days “Rush Hour 2,” sumo wrestling, or Jerry Springer tapes play on loop on the TV instead.
Because nothing gets the creative juices flowing more than hearing Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker go at it over and over again.
