Louis Fratino’s intimate portraits capture tender, daily pleasures of life and close company. Painting from memory, he captures moments through a saccharine-hued lens, inflected by themes of desire and male sexuality. Big Tristan, 2017,depicts a moment of casual lounging amplified by the subject’s straight-on gaze. At over six feet tall, the larger-than-life canvas invites viewers into this proximate vantage, welcomed, with hands crossed behind his head, by the titular Tristan. The present example was the largest work included in Fratino’s solo show So, I’ve Got You at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in 2017, anchoring his exhibition of lush portraits.
“The show’s untitled masterpiece is a life-size vertical image of a young man lying naked on a box settle, hands clasped behind his head, his body highlighted by the raking light of a lamp. He is talking, caught midsentence while the painter seems to hover above, as do we, tantalized.”
—Roberta Smith
Fratino's mastery of color, bold brushstrokes, and sensuous lines, redefine the rites of masculinity with moments of quiet camaraderie. His paintings bend perspective, and, in the words of Roberta Smith, “[fast-track] the emotional connection of his subjects.” She continues, “The pieces come across as highly erotic without ever feeling maudlin or lecherous; capturing, in concert, the cruisey, moody, poetic landscape of urban gay desire.”i
Big Tristan draws from Picasso’s cubism with its flattened perspective, exaggerated facial figures and heavily stylized blue feet. Christopher Bollen aptly sums: “Think neo-Cubism meets neo-Fauvism meets such radical American painting pioneers as Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley.”ii In depicting the historically less visible male nude, Fratino is also amongst a lineage that includes Lucian Freud and David Hockney. Smith salutes Fratino for his blend of “Lucian Freud’s faceted flesh and David Hockney’s languid homoeroticism.”iii In Big Tristian the resulting figure is magnetic and languorous, charging the work with a tender, subtly erotic hum.
i Roberta Smith, “What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week,” The New York Times, September 28, 2017, online.
ii Christopher Bollen, “For Louis Fratino, Painting Offers a More Permanent Kind of Pleasure,” Interview Magazine, March 10, 2021, online.
iii Roberta Smith, “What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week”
Provenance
Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Louis Fratino: So, I've Got You, September 10–October 8, 2017 Amsterdam, GRIMM, Equal Affections, July 23–September 5, 2021, pp. 58–59 (illustrated, p. 59)
Literature
Roberta Smith, "Louis Fratino," The New York Times, September 28, 2017, online Sasha Bogojev, "Equal Affections: GRIMM Gallery Group Exhibition Channels the Great Novel of David Leavitt," Juxtapoz, September 9, 2011, online (GRIMM, Amsterdam, 2021 installation view illustrated)