1. I met Federico Herrero in San Juan during the PR 02 Biennale. I found him where he was carefully painting yellow pedestrian crossing lines on the floor of the lobby of the Fortaleza building, bringing the street inside the building. During the days that followed we became good friends. His work surpasses traditional approaches to painting, from the finding of references in the painted surfaces he encounters every day, to the defying of two dimensionality through the creation of emotionally charged spaces through surfaces he paints himself.
2. It would be too easy to situate Federico’s work within a double periphery becoming center: Costa Rican artist living and working in Costa Rica. Within these conditions/contradictions, Federico is a young successful artist in both the commercial circuit and the international art scene; however his work resists the requirements of any of the two fields, but emerges from Federico’s own center from where it expands to other territories.
3. I am interested in things that are located somewhere in between the semi-center and the semi-periphery, from where they are able to negotiate their position with the center without making concessions, and to work from the periphery in order not to lose contact with their reality, while
creating a dialogue and bridging the gap existing between the political and the aesthetical conditions of the world.
— Pablo Leon de la Barra

Selected solo exhibitions: 2003: Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José; Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid; 2002: Sies + Hoeke Galerie, Dusseldorf.
Selected group exhibitions: 2003: 8a Bienal de La Habana; 2002: Artistmos, Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; Urgent Painting, Musee d’art moderne de la Ville, Paris; 2001: 49a Biennale di Venezia; Políticas de la Diferencia, Pinacoteca, São Paulo Brasil/ Museo de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Radio Reloj, Galeria Nacional/ Museo de los Niños, San José; Arqueotipos, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José; 2000: Recuadros, Jacob Kapio, San José; De Generación, La Nueva Escuela, San José; Neo Arte, Teorética, San José; Puertos y Costas Ricas, M.M. Proyectos, San Juan, Puerto Rico; El ultimo dibujo del milenio, Teatro Nacional, La Habana; Ex3, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José.