Nathanael Flink is an artist and curator based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Flink's aesthetic vocabulary involves a searching for emotive and pure gestures that suggest a relationship with other compositional elements.

Veronique Wantz Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of work by Nathanael Flink opening on January 27, 2024 and running through March 2, 2024. “Falling Into Place” will feature a group of mixed media and textile works by the artist. Of this new body of work, Flink remarks that he “employs strategies of formal assemblage to evoke associations of mood and light.” Utilizing textile collage, the artist cuts apart cloth into assorted fragments that he has previously transformed from skillfully manipulating various dyes and coloration. He then arranges and sews together the cloth pieces, forming dynamic compositions that are stretched onto wall-based supports. Sometimes bucolic, meditative or brash, the artist compares these works to analogies of life relationships. Both intimate and visceral, the soft and bold hues interplay together and suggest unexpected narratives and nostalgia, conjured through the stitching together of shape, texture and surface.

Flink had his first studio above a shoe store in Minneapolis. Later he lived in upstate New York. His approach to abstraction developed through a period of wide experimentation, including a foray into darkroom photography. Striving for a balance between expression and playfulness, the formal qualities of Flink’s work manifest spatial tension evocative of movement.

Flink’s work available at Veronique Wantz Gallery are selections that draw from several thematic periods ranging between the mid-2000's to the present. Flink's most recent work utilizes unlikely combinations of mark, color, and pattern that suggest open ended narratives relating to domestic experience, consumerism and an urbanized world which manifests tensions between spatial, temporal and material dimensions. Also available at the gallery are several acrylic paintings originating with Flink's Becoming series. These works incorporate flow and serendipity that juxtapose visual occurrences with captive energy. Finally, the oil on canvas pieces dating from the mid-aughts underscore Flink's painting concerns demonstrating a shift from lush and saturated works emphasizing painting mechanics.

Flink earned a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1994. He has been the recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant. Flink has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions in South Korea and Minnesota, and group exhibitions in New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont. His work is held in private collections in North America and Asia.

Please click here to read Nathanael Flink’s Artist Statement.

Please click here to read Midwest Home’s article by Elizabeth Roubik regarding Nathanael Flink’s 2024 “Falling Into Place” exhibition at Veronique Wantz Gallery.

Please click here to read the Mplsart.com review by Micah Ruelle of Nathanael’s “Falling Into Place” show at Veronique Wantz Gallery.