Louis Fratino & Michael Brennan In Conversation

Brooklyn-based artist, Louis Fratino (b. 1993, Annapolis, MD), adapts the visual languages of European and American Modernism to contemplate the beauty and queerness in the gestures and experiences of the everyday—in nature, in the home, and in one’s own self-conception.

Fratino received his BFA in Painting with concentration in Illustration from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (2015). He is a recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Painting, Berlin (2015-16) and a Yale Norfolk Painting Fellowship, Norfolk, CT in 2014.

A selection of Fratino’s paintings, drawings, prints, and sketchbooks are currently featured in conversation with works by Matisse from the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art in the exhibition Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again, on view at the museum through September 6, 2026. In 2024, Fratino’s paintings were featured in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. That same year, his first institutional solo exhibition, Louis Fratino: Satura, was held at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph published by Mousse Publishing.

Fratino’s work is included in major institutional collections, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Christien Sveaas Art Foundation, Oslo, Norway; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

Michael Brennan (b. 1965, Pine Island, FL; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited his paintings and works on paper nationally and internationally for the past three decades, including in the United States, Mexico, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, China, Australia, and New Zealand. 

At Minus Space Gallery, he previously mounted four very well-received solo exhibitions—Floating Weeds (2023), Late Spring (2018), Grey Razor Paintings (2014), and Knife Paintings (2006)—and has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Minus Space Gallery’s major survey exhibition MINUS SPACE at MoMA PS1 in 2008-2009 and Twenty (2023).

Brennan’s work has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Art in America, ARTnews, Art New England, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtNet Magazine, NY Arts, and Philadelphia Inquirer. He is also an accomplished arts writer, and his reviews and essays have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, ArtNet Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, The Village Voice, The Architect’s Newspaper, American Abstract Artists, and Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution, as well as in numerous exhibition catalogues.

Brennan’s work is included in collections such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, American Express, General Dynamics, Daimler AG, and Sony Corporation. He holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Art History from Pratt Institute and a BA in Classics from the University of Florida. He has taught at Pratt Institute since 1998 and is currently Adjunct Professor in the Fine Arts Department. He has also previously taught at the School of Visual Arts, Hunter College, and Cooper Union (all NYC).

This event is open to the public.