In-person, Online, Hybrid mentor (in-person and online)
nate.flink@concreteintuition.com
http://www.nathanaelflink.com/
he/him/his
Drawing/Painting, Interdisciplinary

BIO 

Nathanael Flink is an artist based in Minnesota. He earned a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1994. Flink has been the recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant. He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions in South Korea and Minnesota and group exhibitions nationally, including New York, and California. His work is held in private collections in North America and Asia. In 2016 Flink was awarded a fellowship to facilitate the exhibition of more than 50 nationally recognized artists at the venue Space 369 in St Paul. Flink has continued to bring about exhibitions as a guest curator. In Minneapolis in 2020, 2021 and 2023 he curated group exhibitions at the Casket Arts gallery operated by NE Sculpture with local and national artists. Flink began his career as a figurative painter and has worked in a range of disciplines including photography, video, sound and music, sculpture, and most recently mixed media work with textiles and soft materials. Flink’s aesthetic vocabulary involves a searching for emotive and pure gestures that suggest a relationship with other compositional elements. Utilizing unlikely combinations of mark, color and pattern he creates open ended narratives that react to gross consumerism. Through the lens of a domestic experience his pieces imply an urbanized world evocative of movement and spatial, temporal and material tension. Often the evidence of the mark making becomes its own compositional subject. Flink creates his work and lives with his family in Saint Paul.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIP

In addition to dialogue on art and the art world, I can offer practical feedback, advice and art world experience as it relates to an MFA candidate’s goals and strategies. Often it takes years for recent graduates to brake into their own niche, market or position. My strategy would be to leverage my knowledge and experience in working with galleries, curators and artists to support and help accelerate an MFA candidate to begin to move in an artistic and career direction that relates to their own objectives. It is valuable for any artist to gain connections within an arts ecosystem – I believe I am in a position to assist with making introductions and providing useful advice in this area. I have spent many years working with artists on both a business level and on an informal basis to collaborate on exhibitions, achieve success in securing artist grant funding, various print and web design projects, musical collaborations, working with gallerists, finding exhibition opportunities, artistic dialogue groups, and studio practices. I am interested in a wide range of work and styles and my focus is building trust through sharing direct observations and encouragement toward directions that are unique, intuitive, dynamic, and reflecting significant artistic development.