Federico Herrero sees paintings everywhere, from street curbs and traffic signs to the painted trees and stones which proliferate in his native San José, Costa Rica. It is this examination of how color, shapes and signs define the urban environment that is vital to his practice as a painter. Through this consideration, he builds environments that enable him to escape the limitations of painting while still remaining in dialogue with its elemental origins. In Herrero’s distinctive, light-filled palette, planes of pigment settle into irregular shapes. As the artist notes, “I tend to think of color as sound and volume, or give it properties like weight.” Deeply rooted in the body’s relationship to form and the built environment, Herrero acknowledges the rich historical lineages of midcentury abstraction and Latin American formalism, while moving beyond and outside these traditions to the world of contemporary realism.