‘I can’t wait to paint myself when I’m old and knobbly’: the sensual world of Louis Fratino

His old-fashioned painting prowess and explicitly queer subject matter has made the young American artist hot property. So why are some people so shocked?

Next month, the 2024 Venice Biennale will close, and a memorable painting in the main exhibition will come down: I Keep My Treasure in My Ass, by Louis Fratino. With a title taken from a 1977 book called Towards a Gay Communism, the work depicts Fratino giving birth to himself from his rectum. It has been stopping visitors in their tracks. “I had a friend at the biennale,” says the 31-year-old American artist, “who said that people were almost queuing to stand at that painting – then grimacing or having physical reactions. Which to me is hilarious, because it’s so not naturalistic. There’s no implication of pain. It’s like a tarot card, almost.”

An unassuming figure in wire-rimmed specs, flannel shirt and New Balance trainers (who despite not being “super gregarious” is recovering from a celebratory night in a Florentine gay bar called Crisco Club that finished at 4am), Fratino is talking to me at the Centro Pecci in Prato, Italy, where an exhibition of his work has just opened. Promoted on giant banners throughout the city showing a magnified version of his tiny work Blowjob and Moon – one of which is slung over the ramparts of the local castle – the show is called Satura, and it’s his first solo show in a public art institution, rather than a commercial gallery.