Tactiles

Kunsthalle Lissabon presents Tactiles, the first solo show in Portugal by the Costa Rican artist Federico Herrero. 
The word “tactil” derives from the ancient Greek “haptikós” which literally means “able to come in contact with”. Herrero’s ability to come in contact with the surroundings goes far beyond simple physical contact, on the contrary it often begins with the simple gaze that delicately, brushes the surfaces that compose the cities and captures their most intense vibrations.

Tactiles is conceived as a site-specific exhibition, where colors and primordial architectural structures give a new rhythm to the use of the space. In the first room a group of concrete pyramidal shapes gather in the center of the room, while all around the colors seem to climb the walls in search of the light that generated them. In the second room the atmosphere becomes rarefied while structures made out of wood and concrete, mark the space and its new fruition which together, with their colors and compositions, seem to reflect other fundamental aspects of Federico Herrero’s practice: harmony, balance and calm.

Known for his colorful site-paintings Herrero’s research hides its roots in the urbanism and in the accurate observation of landscapes, cities, and of all the shapes and colors that silently populate them while shaping the visual culture of each place. 
By constructing a dialogue through the unfolding of the exhibition space, Herrero pays the utmost attention to space and the way in which it reveals itself before his eyes, discovering each time new perspectives and solutions, always different according to the point of view from which they present themselves to the artist.

Being influenced by the shapes that sprinkle everyday life, the artist embraces the freedom in which colors, forms and culture collide to create a language free from any kind of sketches and preset ideas.  However, nothing is left to chance in Herrero’s research, indeed, every color and every 
shape are part of a precise sense of the site, using the intuition as the main tool, and sometimes the vocabulary of the abstract expressionism to build his visual poetry. He begins by following a feeling and takes it to its maximum expression often reaching a monumental approach. 
Herrero captures the fragmentated and multifaceted nature of urban landscapes in a few simple elements, not only depicting a precise moment, but conveying a unique sense of duration, that include its continuous evolution and its adaptation to external factors. 
Looking at Federico Herrero’s work, one does not have the impression of looking at a crystallized image, but, as John Berger wrote to describe Paul Strand photographs “one has the strange impression that the exposure time is the life time”.