FEDERICO HERRERO

In his intricate post-geometrical compositions, Herrero brings to life irregular, soft, almost liquid shapes. He uses the static pictorial medium to convey continuous motion, with forms that seem to vibrate, stretch, and expand across flat surfaces. Over-saturated at times, his compositions reflect the contemporary overflow of images and information in the digital age.

Herrero's expansive work draws inspiration from the architecture and urban structures of his hometown San Jose. Through his visible obsession with an urban body that is rarely finalised, his work is intimately linked to movement. The artist is particularly interested in the way forms interact with each other, in the particular tension that arises within these ambiguous, liminal spaces where shapes touch. Like the painter Etel Adnan, he translates color into language, into poetry.

Indubitably linked to the legacies of twentieth century abstract art, Herrero's reliance on shapes and colour to produce meaning positions him in the footsteps of Wassily Kandinsky's famous colour theory and the Bauhausian approach to the power of colour and form. He updates these theories for the contemporary era with his less precise, more fluid shapes, which resonate in new ways amidst today's digital backdrop. His canvases resist the sharpness typical of geometric abstraction, instead favouring a 'soft edge' approach that defies traditional boundaries and invites open interpretation.

Herrero's background in architecture informs his interest in painting in the public realm, his questionings on how space in general shapes perception, and his quest to create new collective spaces with his art. He values the spontaneous interaction with his surroundings, which is integral to his creative process. Unlike Sol LeWitt, whose compositions were meticulously preconceived, Herrero relies on improvisation and is always responsive to the space he works within, which imbues his work with an abstract expressionist quality and organic flow.

A contemporary successor to the early 20th Century Central American muralist tradition, Herrero's murals diverge from the politically charged works of predecessors like Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Instead, his murals celebrate the present moment and engage communities, serving as an invitation to collective reflection and interaction. Herrero seeks to blur the boundary between life and art, evident in his everyday observations captured in photographs as 'found paintings.' These images—brightly painted patterns and objects from streets like curbs, signs, and pavements—highlight his fascination with how painting integrates into daily life, extending beyond traditional canvases. Inspired by artists like Hélio Oiticica and Jesus Rafael Soto, known for their Penetrable works, he views painting as a sensory and bodily experience, inviting viewers to navigate through it.

In this exhilaration through sensorial experiences, Federico Herrero's work stands like a cheerful hymn to life, to the most basic elements that shape one's existence: senses, shapes and colours. Herrero notes: "I'm triggered by the possibility that paintings can know something about you, that they can understand how they should be and can guide me." One must be prepared to look deep into Federico Herrero's works and welcome an open, reciprocal conversation with them. To him, you are not the only one looking. Painting can look back at you.