Wall Painting & Mirror

　Federico Herrero has turned the interior of a thirteen-meter, three-story stair tower at Towada Art Center, and its connecting rooftop, into a work of art. An artist who has long placed importance on presenting art in informal contexts, Herrero has carried out many painting projects in public spaces. Working without preliminary sketches, he paints in an improvisational flow contained by neither canvas frame nor flat plane, the work leaping around the space, from walls to floors and ceiling. The colors and forms in Herrero’s works depend largely on inspirations gained on site. Here in Towada, he took three weeks to convert his impressions into painted form. Climbing the tower with its bright, writhing colors and forms, we see blue gradually increasing in the composition, eventually reaching a rooftop dominated by a beautiful blue reflecting the blue sky. The rooftop functions as an observation deck from which a panorama of the city and its natural surroundings mirrors the artist’s message that, “The world is connected by the sky.”
　Herrero studied architecture and painting in San Jose (Costa Rica) and New York. Active globally, he participated in the arts program for Expo 2005, Aichi, early in his career.

Image: Mirror
Photo: Iwasaki Mami