Return of the Hollow Men
Many Guixé ideas and projects are accompanied by a drawn figure, the outline of a long torso and gangly limbs, topped by a tiny head. I don’t think it’s him, and it’s not really an alter ego. He’s cute, but his task is utilitarian: the job is to demonstrate meaning by visualizing it in praxis, in common use. He’s Martí’s little helper, a hired hand, like the bit actors working exercise contraptions on late-night TV.
In the modern world such surrogate figures weren’t needed. Creative objects spoke for themselves, without intermediaries, and even emitted auras. Exciting times they were. Real people were okay, but proxies were abhorrent, especially if they were thin and vacuous. Like T. S. Eliot’s hollow men, empty, ghost-like presences, their voices as “quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass”. Not the kind of guy you want to do your marketing for you.
Things are different now, and the hollow men are back. Creators are required to personally vouch for what they’ve done, to stand by it and see it through. This needs to be visualized, but permanent presence is impossible. So proxies are okay, even comic ones.
In the exhibit and catalogue for the show on Italian design factories at the Milan Triennale, Guixé turns the illustrated face of curator Alberto Alessi into the vehicular host. A talking head, a visible audio guide, with you at every step; even his handwriting has been digitalized into a typeface. Discussing, cajoling, convincing. The person generating the exhibition thesis backs his narrative while bringing the visitor into the interpretive circle. But as a cartoon character, a comfortably human hollow man untroubled by the void.
Jeffrey Swartz

Triennale Design Museum
Dream Factories Exhibition
4th April 2011 - 26th February 2012

Triennale Design Museum
Dream Factories Catalogue

My first office / shelve
Magis MeToo
Pad 20, Stand C01, D02.

Metoo Myzoo / toys
Magis MeToo
Pad 20, Stand C01, D02.

Chaos Manager / table
Danese
Pad 11, Stand B29, C32

Free port / cabinet
Bd Barcelona
Pad 16, Stand C39

Lapin Kulta Solar Kitchen Restaurant
Opening day: sunny days starting the 12th till the 17th from 10 to 17h, food from 12 to 15h. At the back of the Triennale di Milano

Domus Live
"Food follows function"
Saturday 16th, h 7pm.
Opificio 31, via Tortona 31, Milan