Barrio Escalante, San José

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Sin título, by José Alejandro Herrera. An urban hillside is compressed into four successive tiers of vibrant facades, where color bursts forth without hierarchy or restraint.
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José Alejandro Herrera

Sin títuloSold

Year
2024
Technique
Acrylic/Canvas
Dimensions
90 × 100 cm
Collection
Urbana
Status
Sold
Palette
terracotta orange, fuchsia, turquoise, chrome yellow, cobalt blue
Brushwork
Smooth acrylic planes delimited by sharp contours and linear graphics in the textures of roofs and grilles.

Curatorial analysis

An urban hillside is compressed into four successive tiers of vibrant facades, where color bursts forth without hierarchy or restraint. José Alejandro Herrera organizes this neighborhood through a stepped rhythm of zinc and clay-tile roofs that dispenses with Renaissance perspective in favor of an accumulative, almost cartographic vision. The yellow, fuchsia, turquoise, and violet walls assemble a chromatic symphony evoking the visual memory of Costa Rican neighborhood peripheries, yet swiftly dismantling any pretense of innocent costumbrismo.

Across this architectural grid of meticulous iron grilles and latticework, ordinary life coexists with anomaly. On the intermediate street, a lilac Volkswagen Beetle pauses beside a passerby in a rural brimmed hat, while domestic cats wander along the cornices. Yet, in the very same space where toucans perch and coatis scurry along sidewalks, prehistoric pterosaurs soar through the sky and over rooftops, and a lone naked figure executes an improbable leap across roof tiles. The domestic scene is thus fractured by the sudden arrival of delirium and anachronism.

The precise line work and planes of saturated acrylic bestow a graphic clarity upon the canvas, stripped of dramatic shadows. The light is uniform, overhead, spread across surfaces that occasionally reveal subtle fissures in the plaster, hinting at the passage of time within an intentionally suspended realm. The repeating textures of corrugated zinc, clay tiles, and wooden slats build a tactile vibration contrasting with the stillness of sealed doors and barred windows.

Herrera transforms the communal postcard into a theater of impossible coincidences, where the architectural memory of the barrio functions as the setting for a personal, playful, and unsettlingly festive mythology.

Sin título

More works by José Alejandro Herrera

66 works

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View all 66 works by José Alejandro Herrera

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