Louis Fratino
“Morning”
New York, 530 West 22nd Street
They have called me
“The exclusive poet of love.”
And perhaps this is true.
But the wind here that blows
on each blade of grass
and the noises of the distant city
whose lights are visible from where I stand,
do they not also speak of love?
And are there not behind these warm clouds
the sounds of an ardent love beyond which
there is nothing but silence? (1)
Polaroids on the kitchen counter, 2020 Oil on canvas 60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm) Polaroids on the kitchen counter, 2020Richardson Street Living Room, 2020
Louis Fratino makes paintings and drawings from specific memory and art historical references. Fratino synthesizes visual languages sampled from antiquity to modernism to describe the contemporary body, landscape, and interior spaces. New paintings of still lifes and interiors explore the tonal and emotionally evocative qualities of morning light, and the quotidian routines associated with that time of day. Searching for a sense of queerness in the gestures of everyday life, Fratino considers the nuanced interactions of light with form, space, and surface as potential realms for discovery. Influenced by the writings of Italian poet Sandro Penna and works by artists Filippo de Pisis and Marsden Hartley, Fratino looks for an essential queerness that lies parallel to the body, extending outward into a more complete world.
