RESURRECTION

There are many definitions for the word medium, all of which suggest an intermediate role  or condition. In art usage the word is used to impose order on the confusion caused by the innumerable forms of art out there, and refers to a category or means of expression determined by the materials or methods used. To be even more specialized, in painting, medium is the term for the liquid in which dry pigment is ground and prepared for application.

Flint is an artist whose chosen medium consists of found materials, which he collects from places most people overlook or purposely avoid. What these materials were exactly in their former lives is not important. Neither are the details of his technique, which appears to
be a highly sophisticated, precise form of collage. All you need to know is that most of the material is printed matter. Because of this, I told him he paints with paper.

Flint does not like to answer questions about his technique. Perhaps this is because his materials and his technique" commonly thought of as the components of an artist’s medium" do not complete the picture.

And in the picture, look at how he has transformed urban detritus into color-saturated, richly iconographic images of arrestingly weird beauty that can bring to mind the art of several periods and cultural influences, from 15th century Flemish (both secular
and religious) to 1930s Dadaist/Surrealist, while looking thoroughly contemporary all at
the same time. Take for example the portrait heads. Each wears a tall pointed hat as if to denote their unfortunate status as outcasts or objects of ridicule. Their features are mismatched and their faces are like patchwork quilts, but they return your gaze,
wearing their deformities without shame. Something about that attitude of equanimity
reminds me of the portraits by Northern Renaissance painters like Rogier van der Weyden, since the Flemish, unlike the Italians, were much less inclined to mask their flaws. The way
Flint uses distortions to create a range of emotional nuances recalls Surrealist photomontage
techniques like those of Hannah Haach. The hat brings together the group of sad faces like a medical pathology encyclopedia of congenital diseases that you might find on your doctors
bookshelf.

In much of Flint's art there is an element of the subconscious at work. He often says that his art is about the people he sees on the streets contorted expressions and poses, their funny gaits and how they all reveal much more than they think they do. It's not a surprise that many of these portraits seem satirical. I challenge anyone to find one that is complimentary. In fact, he has even called his work a kind of revenge. Like a mirror, Flint records what he sees, creates his art, and then sells it back to the people who inspired him. Even though he is having the last laugh, Flint is aware of other forces at work. When asked what kind of message he is trying to convey, he responds that he doesn't think about the message
or even the emotion; he is just concentrating on getting it done. Part of this response
has to do with the belief that every viewer's interpretation will be different since the experience of art is so subjective. But I suspect part of it also relates to something he is unable to describe. For years he had been making what he calls his crab pieces, which may be described as zoomorphic images, each with at least four tentacles splaying out from a central cluster of bulbous shapes resembling scales or eyes. He didn't understand what drove him to make hundreds of these crab pieces, and he realized only recently what they
signified: when Flint was a teenager, his father died of a massive heart attack. Flint
found him lying in this position.


Flint is disciplined about recording his own dreams, the nightly window into one's subconscious, or in his opinion, psychic consciousness. He has read my palm and his observations are pretty accurate, if you believe in clairvoyance. Without getting too
literal, I can't help but think of another definition for medium: someone who serves as an
intermediary between the living and the dead. I raise this not because Flint is a spiritualist (he is); or that he resurrects discarded printed matter of no value by turning it into objects of desire with price tags (he does); but that every work of art is a meditation on life and death.

   Emily Wei