LOUIS FRATINO
Come Softly To Me
April 18 – May 24, 2019
Image courtesy of Jasmine Vojdani.
“Although acutely following the tradition of artists like Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, Fratino’s canvases are neither derivative nor pastiche. Rather, in a stroke of generative revisionism, the works here inscribe the straight art-historical canon with the prosaic and intimate junctions of gay life today.”
Sophia Larigakis, Artforum Critic’s Pick, May 2019
“Fratino is best known for painting homosexual love in all its stages—desire, consummation, love, and loss—but elsewhere his work explores the intimacy of family in paintings featuring his mother and baby niece. Where his previous work evoked comfort and shared domestic spaces, you get the sense that Fratino has expanded his gaze outward in this show. To see the city through his eyes—to see him looking—feels like a gift.”
Interview by Jasmine Vojdani for the Columbia Journal, May 2019
“While his imagery may be derived from photographs he has taken, the work is never flat and photographic, which is important. Fratino might start with a photograph, but he is not limited by it. This is because he knows how to situate a figure in space, something that the art world once thought of as old fashioned.”