Toronto's Sean Martindale in IMPERMANENT PUBLIC

I am not quite sure how to describe how exciting it is to have Sean Martindale involved in IMPERMANENT PUBLIC. A few months ago, when this show was still hatching in my brainpan, I emailed him to express my appreciation for a project he had worked on where he organized a group of artists to creatively fix dilapidated city planters in Toronto. After a brief exchange we decided that his work seemed necessary in the show, as did a collaborative piece designed by Martindale and built by The Future Presence Gallery for Minneapolis. This is almost the art equivalent of Michael Jordan agreeing to be on your pickup basketball team.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, he has been featured on just about every art/culture/fashion/trend blog ever for his inspired, unique public interventions which often combat advertising and urban grime with greenery. His work blankets not only the internet but also appears on city streets through collaborations with artists worldwide.

Pictured above is one of his more fascinating projects, an example of the Poster Pocket Plants, a collaboration with Eric Cheung . Using wheatpasted and illegal ad posters as material, they cut or extend a rip in the poster, staple it to the side and fill this created pocket with gravel, soil and everything a growing plant needs. It seems so, pardon the expression, natural, to take decomposing matter and make something bloom from it. Practical, beautifying and creative, Sean Martindale is most certainly a key figure in a new international direction for street and public art. 

Nathaniel


IMPERMANENT PUBLIC is Friday, July 29th from 5-11 at the Future Presence Gallery, 1126 2nd St NE, MPLS MN, 55413