The title of Louis Fratino’s Satura at the Centro Pecci comes from a term in Latin, Satura Lanx. This was a plate of fruits that were intended for the Gods. It’s in this context that Fratino’s engagement with queer history, Italian landscapes, and the body itself, seem best understood. Throughout the images in Satura - paintings, lithographs, exploratory drawings - there are breadcrumbs leading towards queer cultural history, their offhand nature providing the show with a kind of 'if you know, you know,' extra dimension.
These can be as simple as paintings like View of Monte Cristo (2020) containing a book with Frank O’Hara’s name on it by an open window, to the stark shadows in the lithograph Figure After Dino Pedrialli (2020), a photographer Pasolini commissioned to spend two days with him in 1975, just days before his death. Pasolini seems like a perfect fit with Fratino’s body of work - this exploration of intimacy and the body in a way steeped in not just an emotional understanding of queerness but a historical, theoretical one as well.
