Saturated with a warm incandescent light, Covetousness invites the viewer into the intimate and seductive world of Louis Fratino’s dynamic painterly tableau, illuminating at once the tenderness and tension between two male lovers lying together. Executed in 2019, the present work is exemplary of the atmospheric lull, contemplative tenderness, and abstracted figurative motifs that distinguish the Brooklyn-based painter’s practice, which deftly represent queer embodiment in the gestures of everyday contemporary life. From its delicate warping of spatial perspective to its stylistically contorted figuration, Covetousness combines the very best of Fratino’s innovative aesthetic lexicon, which poetically constructs a relatable domestic and emotional scene that welcomes our sensitive gaze.

In recent years, Fratino has emerged as one of the most exciting contemporary artistic voices with his tender examinations of human relationships, intimacy, and queer identity as sites of profound emotive expression. In the flattened depth of his paintings, Fratino situates abstract figures in various corporeal contortions, evincing his formal mastery over foundational Cubist and Modernist techniques employed by artistic forebears including Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. Often rendering his male figures with languid repose traditionally reserved for the female nude, Fratino’s visual vernacular fused canonical painterly trope with personal fantasy to interpret queerness with distinct sensuality and sentimentality.

Two luminous figures intertwined within the tight frame of the canvas, Covetousness represents a moment of private moment of tender intimacy between lovers. Simultaneously recalling Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensuous morphology and Pablo Picasso’s abstract figuration, Fratino’s deft painterly hand gives way to tender musings on the embodied queer experience in the contemporary age.