Memories are tricky, yet, even when shared, they are what make our lives our own. At 28, Louis Fratino has chosen to cull his lived experiences, those moments that reappear when needed, like a folded $20 bill found in a trusted old coat pocket. There is delight in its rediscovery.
'I like to garden, so I spend every morning doing a tour, seeing if anything has opened or closed,' says the New York City–based artist. 'I realized that it’s sort of talked about like this impossible thing, but if you’re walking through it every day, it’s pretty easy to stay on top of it.'
That visceral and physical approach, the awareness that if you don’t go into the garden the weeds will take over, is evident in Fratino’s work. Whether using charcoal, oils or pastels, his sense of touch is soothing, like that of a familiar hand placed, just so, on the small of your back just when needed. For some, the gay male figure and the sexuality attached to it will always be deemed a threat. Fratino presents his paintings in a way that is an invitation to the intimate, private moments remembered, in turn making him, and the viewer, a voyeur of time spent.
'Touch drives the work. The way that I draw, which references art history and is stylized, comes from my imagination, relies on one element of reality, where there is a suspension of belief,' he says. 'Often that is the physical touch between two people or maybe even the sensory touch of recognizing a surface or sensation, where even if the eyes are a bit larger or the color is not naturalistic, there is something there that makes you believe in what you’re looking at.'
Like many around the world, Fratino had to contend with COVID-19, the solitude and uncertainty, calling into question his second solo show, ‘Morning’ at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., which opened in October 2020.
'Many people were canceling things or were asking if I was worried about viewership. I felt like it was a lifeline, having something familiar to that of regular life to focus on,' he says. 'I had started that body of work before the pandemic, which was already a shift to interior spaces. I think it was interpreted as ‘a year at home’ worth of work, but it was a natural progression that was happening regardless.'
Drawing has always been the cornerstone of his practice. 'I keep a sketchbook that I draw in constantly. Not necessarily something from life, more a notation of memory. I think of drawing as more like a tool for image making, not so much a journal. But during the pandemic, he did turn to the journals of Eugène Delacroix, the 19th-century French Romantic painter, which informed his thinking around ‘Morning’.
‘He had such a solitary life. He talks a lot about looking for a kind of serenity or peace despite everything, and as a painter talking about using the effects of light in practical terms,’he says. ‘I feel so often my work is understood too quickly, in terms of its gender or sexual identity, but that the painting are never really thought of in those terms (use of light). I think that wanting to veer the world into that direction, of the interiors or natural spaces, was trying to create a more level playing field. That kind of intimacy comes first and it can come through all kinds of things that are experiences in my life and in a queer person’s life. It’s doesn’t rely on a performative signifier.’
Fratino takes referential cues from painters like Marsden Hartley and David Hockney. 'The way my figures are formed comes from my personal taste and interest in art history and wanting to collide in a way that hopefully builds my vocabulary,' says Fratino. 'I’m interested in artists, like me, that were gay and want to know why they drew a figure in the way they did. I’m also trying to figure out what it means that I’m an American painter.'
Though he is looking at the works of other gay men, he doesn’t shy away from more controversial points of reference as a means of engaging with or overcoming it, like those of Thomas Hart Benton, the prominent Regional painter, who was outwardly homophobic. 'I love his work. I love the American quality, at a basic level. The volume and the roundness, his relationship to Mexican muralism, but repurposing that to say something about regional America,' says Fratino, who grew up in rural Maryland. 'He was super homophobic, but part of me doesn’t feel that invalidates his work or vocabulary as something I can use or pull from. I think it makes it more worth subordinating, or at least trying to.'
After graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015, he moved to Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. Due to the financial practicalities of beginning artists, Fratino focused on small paintings, the first pieces he showed in New York, and even with his burgeoning career, they remain a part of his practice, seeing more than scale. 'It meant something that they were so tiny. It means something about my identity as a queer artist too,' he says. 'Being queer and being a gay man isn’t always about being loud. I feel the opposite is true. There is a reinforcement of feeling, of touch, when you physically have to get close to a work. But it’s also exciting as a painter to be able to imagine the biggest painting you’ve ever made. If you’re going to give yourself license to go in this direction (exhibiting small paintings), then you need to make sure that you’re going in the other direction too.'
As an artist who focuses on associative thinking, one must ask: Can a memory be a lie? 'Definitely. Surrendering yourself to that is also kind of liberating, maybe a less anxious way of moving through the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m just stupid enough to be a good painter, where I’m not really worried about truth or getting at the root of the system of representation,' he says. 'We are in a really weird moment where things change so fast. We kind of congratulate ourselves of being the most progressive group of people that have ever been, but a part of being a painter and looking backward so frequently, and wanting to, it really makes you realize how the same issues are being regurgitated over and over again. The same questions don’t nec- essarily have answers to them, still, which, for me, is kind of nice. It makes the case for painting.'
This article was originally published in the Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 magazine, guest-edited by Xaviera Simmons.
Louis Fratino is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Brian Keith Jackson is is an American novelist, essayist and culture writer based in Harlem.
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Captions for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Louis Fratino, Morning (detail), 2020. 2. Louis Fratino, Clinton Hill shower (detail), 2021. All photos by Jason Wyche. © Louis Fratino. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York City.