Frieze Masters Talks explores how the past shapes contemporary art

Frieze Masters Talks: Breaking the Mould convened a constellation of contemporary practitioners, curators and cultural leaders to examine an enduring tension in artistic practice: the pull between formal innovation and historical precedent. Held in collaboration with Dunhill and curated for the second consecutive year by Arturo Galansino, Director General of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the programme moved beyond nostalgic retrospection to ask how artists, architects and designers actively engage with the materials, techniques and formal languages of the past to inform their own work.

The speakers bridged disciplines and geographies with characteristic fluency. Grayson Perry’s irreverent ceramics sit in conversation with ancient pottery traditions; the architect Lina Ghotmeh draws on vernacular building methods; Danh Vo works with found and historical objects to create new meaning; the designer Kulapat Yantrasast merges craft heritage with contemporary sensibility. Across the talks, Es Devlin, Tim Marlow, Iris Moon and others articulated how constraint often breeds creativity, and how mastery of inherited form can paradoxically liberate artistic vision.

What emerged was not a simple regression to the historical, but rather an intricate choreography between past and present. The speakers demonstrated that understanding one’s artistic lineage is not about replication or pastiche, but about acquiring the vocabulary to speak authentically in one’s own moment. The mould, in other words, exists to be broken with intelligence and grace.

Recordings of the talks are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, making these conversations accessible to anyone seeking to understand how contemporary practice remains rooted in the generative soil of history.

Imagery courtesy of Frieze (@friezeofficial).