Design museum Gent catalogue

The work of self-proclaimed ex-designer Martí Guixé (°1964) can aptly be described as ‘beyond design’. Creating new objects he finds rather ‘superfluous’ and ‘boring’; he prefers to concentrate on ideas, systems and living matter such as food and human behaviour. As a ‘global designer’, Guixé constantly travels back and forth between Berlin and his native Barcelona, analyses situations, rituals and movements and proposes radical solutions with a minimum of ergonomics – simple, immaterial, humorous and often iconoclastic.

Limited edition design is hot. But is this still design? Or have these creations reached, even crossed, the boundary with art? Some critics prefer the middle way and call it design art.

Danny Venlet (°1958, Victoria, Australia) is one of the world’s best and most promising designers; yet his work is a well-kept secret in the design world. This is partly due to the fact that Venlet has worked and lived in two different worlds (Australia and Belgium), but is also explained by the essence of his personality and work – modest, prone to understatement, and relaxed.