‘Vogue or artwork? It doesn’t must be one or the opposite’: 16Arlington’s Marco Capaldo on turning curator for brand spanking new London present

One of many first belongings you see while you go to Recollections of the Future, the brand new exhibition at Frieze No.9 Cork Avenue curated by 16Arlington’s artistic director Marco Capaldo (introduced by Almine Rech), are two polaroids of orchids shot by Andy Warhol in 1980. The extravagance of the flowers’ fleshy petals and the elegant minimize of their fluid types towards their white background emphasise the unusual, primordial fantastic thing about a plant that dates again to the twilight of the dinosaurs. On the similar, the cruel mild, the glimpse of the common-or-garden plastic pot within the nook body, the combination of glamour and messiness that’s basic Warhol, makes the pictures epochally fashionable. In entrance of them you’re feeling, all of sudden, that you’re taking a look at one thing very outdated and really new.

For Capaldo, this interaction of the previous and the longer term unites every of the fourteen items he chosen for his first exhibition. ‘I’ve all the time been actually intrigued by the way in which our reminiscences are altered by change as we transfer ahead into our futures,’ Capaldo tells me. ‘I believe so many instruments exist on this fashionable world to seize reminiscences of their accuracy and I actually wished to analyze that. However as well as, I additionally actually wished to analyze the subjectivity behind reminiscences.’

Marco Capaldo and Almine Rech’s Recollections of the Future at Frieze Cork Avenue

A Warhol polaroid was one of many first artworks that got here to thoughts when Capaldo hit on the idea for the present, largely as a result of they’re his first reminiscence of being moved by a murals. It’s an expertise that has knowledgeable Capaldo’s work as a designer ever since, together with his most up-to-date S/S 2025 catwalk present, which was staged on the historic Royal Academy of Arts throughout London Vogue Week and featured a collection of sculptures by the artist Jesse Pollock.

Whereas the artwork of different individuals is a recurring supply of inspiration for Capaldo, so too are his personal reminiscences. In 2021, Capaldo’s 16Arlington’s co-founder and accomplice Federica ‘Kikka’ Cavenati handed away, and Capaldo has continued to maneuver the model ahead in her reminiscence within the years since. Each assortment has, in its personal explicit manner, nodded to Cavenati’s enduring affect on the model and Capaldo’s personal technique of coming to phrases with a future with out her. As a designer, Capaldo is consistently exploring the connection between what we keep in mind and what we hope for, and as a curator he’s doing the identical.

When Capaldo first started engaged on the present, Almine Rech linked him with a collector in Los Angeles who has the most important assortment of the Warhols on the planet. Ten minutes earlier than the decision, Capaldo picked up a biography of Warhol he had on his workplace shelf. ‘It was a e-book that Kikka and I had purchased once we went to a gap for it on the Tate,’ Capaldo tells me. ‘Which was a stunning reminiscence in itself, however after I pulled this e-book out, I felt one thing inside and after I opened it I discovered a flower from Kikka’s funeral bouquet and I pressed it in that particular e-book years earlier than. That triggered so many reminiscences ten minutes earlier than that telephone name, and after I informed the collector about it, he informed me that Andy did a collection of Polaroids on orchids,’ he continues. ‘That’s only one instance of one of many items, however it’s emblematic of the way it [the entire exhibition] simply fell into place.’

Together with Warhol, different iconic names within the present embrace John Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem ‘free poetry service’ from 1970, which invitations guests to select up a rotary telephone and take heed to icons like William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg learn them a poem. In Capaldo’s phrases, ‘it’s a actual reference to the previous. So many of those individuals have lived unimaginable lives and have handed, and their reminiscence lives on by their voice, which is so stunning.’ The identical is true of Francesca Woodman, who has {a photograph} within the present and whose work, made earlier than her demise at 22 years outdated, has an eerie, spectral aesthetic that’s nonetheless impactful immediately.

But, probably the most thrilling facet of Recollections of the Future is that it gathers into one house so many thrilling, younger skills working immediately These embrace work by George Rouy, Rhea Dillon and Remi Ajani, in addition to a sculpture by Jesse Pollock from the S/S 2025 catwalk present. There’s additionally an set up by Sandra Poulson in the midst of the exhibition which, in Capaldo’s phrases, ‘is such a poignant nod to the theme of the present, since a few of the most stunning reminiscences and a few of the most troublesome reminiscences occur round a eating desk’. Alongside many different works by a few of the most notable rising names working within the UK now.