Background
Federico Herrero was born in 1978, in San José, Costa Rica.
Pratt Institute, New York City, New York, United States
In 1997-1998, Herrero studied painting at Pratt Institute in New York City.
Universidad Hispanoamericana Heredia, Heredia, Costa Rica
In 1999-2001, Federico attended the Universidad Hispanoamericana Heredia in Costa Rica.
Federico Herrero was born in 1978, in San José, Costa Rica.
In 1997-1998, Herrero studied painting at Pratt Institute in New York City. In 1999-2001, he attended the Universidad Hispanoamericana Heredia in Costa Rica.
Herrero creates paintings, which are often populated by patches of color, alien-like figures and disembodied eyes, and reveal a fascination with crossing boundaries. Throughout his practice, he has also blurred the line between public and private, for example, in an intervention, titled "Fictional Publicity" (2000), in which he hung small paintings all over his native city - some remained in place for days, others vanished after just a few minutes.
Federico's selected solo exhibitions include "Pintacoteca", the Museum of Art and Contemporary Design, San José, Costa Rica (2003); "Japanopera: Vertical Thoughts", Gallery Koyanagi Viewing Room, Tokyo, Japan (2004); "Walls/Muri", Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, Italy (2006); "Paintings", Blow de la Barra Gallery, Athens, Greece (2007); "Federico Herrero", Kunstverein Freiburg Gallery, Freiburg, Germany (2008); "Aurora", Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2010); "Abaco", Despacio (art space), San José, Costa Rica (2011); "Paintings", Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States (2012); "Desordem Alfabética", Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil (2015); "Open Alphabet", James Cohan Gallery, New York City, United States (2018); "Volume", James Cohan Gallery, New York City, United States (2020), among others.
The artist has also participated in a number of group exhibitions the most notable of which include "El artista a través de los objetos", Galería Nacional, San José, Costa Rica (1999); "Radio Reloj", Galería Nacional, San José, Costa Rica (2001); "Artistmos", the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2002); "Abstracción", the Museos del Banco Central, San José, Costa Rica (2005); "Existencias", MUSAC, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2007); "Panamericana", Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico (2010); "Recollections – of Willumsen", Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2012); "Big sky friendship", Towada Art Center, Towada, Japan (2014); "Don't talk to strangers", Random Institute, Zurich, Switzerland (2015); "Stages: Drawing the Curtain", Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada (2017); "Cisneros", the Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2019); "Landscapes of the South", Mendes Wood DM, New York City (2020), and many others.
Besides, Federico has also taken part in many biennials, including the 49th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2001); the 8th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (2003); the 1st Prague Biennale, Czech Republic (2003); the 1st Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Seville, Spain (2004); the 1st Singapore Biennale (2006); the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia (2007); the X Bienal Centroamericana, Puerto Limón, Costa Rica (2016), and others.
It's also worth mentioning, that Herrero established Despacio art space in his native San José. The art space is an important force in the continued development of Central America's artistic voice.
Currently, Federico lives and works in San José, Costa Rica.
Herrero's intensely visual language is based on his observations of everyday life in Costa Rica's ever-evolving landscape, especially the way nature and culture collide. In his paintings on canvas, immersive installations and public works, brightly hued organic shapes jostle against each other as they inhabit and negotiate space. There are dissonances and harmonies, which threaten to momentarily unravel, but are bound together with energy, that seems to operate on a nearly atomic scale. They creep along the edges and often break free of the frame entirely, winding onto the walls and into the crevices of his installations' spaces.
Color for Herrero is an expression of space, both the absence of space and the abundance of space and the relationship between them. His canvases and installations, therefore, become exercises in seeing, that compel the viewer to experience their environment in novel ways. Through this duality, his practice is essentially a study of liminal spaces - gaps between public and private, canvas and wall, figure and background, work and viewer - always infused with elements of play, pleasure and humor.
Quotations: "I am fascinated by the way people, who need to communicate something in a very direct way without the barrier of language, use paint. Looking at street signs, advertisements, billboards and all other pictorial, non-language-based forms of communication have influenced me a lot."