Inside the head of Philippe Starck

You are about to enter the brain of someone who works and looks for solutions, sometimes useful, sometimes useless, but always interesting. This was how Phillipe Starck described the exhibition, Starck, Secret Drawings, that opened this week in the Centre Pompidou in Malaga.

The museums temporary exhibition space is now occupied by 30 objects designed by Starck, along with some 4,000 sketches, aimed to help visitors understand the creative process, explained curator Marie-Ange Brayer.

This is the first time in 14 years that Starck has been the subject of an entire exhibition. If I accepted all the proposals from all over the world, that would be my job, a professional exhibitor, he joked. The Malaga project changed his mind, however, as he saw it as a continuation of the show the Paris Pompidou devoted to him back in 2003.

Starcks visit was fleeting; he arrived half an hour late and refused to pose alone with his works for photographers. My wife and I are people who flee. The police arent looking for us yet, but we run away from the city, society, events... and most of all from exhibitions. Exhibitions are like tributes and I dont like something or someone being admired, he said by way of excuse.

He left leaving his Malaga audience to get inside the mind that created the iconic Juicy Salif squeezer (1988); the much copied Louis Ghost (2000) and La Marie (1996) chairs designed for Kartell; the Zik headphones sold by Parrot; and the Brut Nature 2009 bottle, among other pieces.

Were all geniuses, said the designer on Wednesday. The only problem is a lot of people dont know that.