Born in El Salvador, painter Antonio Romero never had the luxury of political ignorance. “Mirror” marks the culmination of Kates-Ferri’s planned residency in New York and is an immersive, critical diorama of his work in progress. Tropicalia series, started in 2016, as well as his new figurative works Navarone The series started in 2019. The play presents new narrative and symbolic climaxes while continuing to explore power and how it operates in today’s world. Here, Romero invites us to reflect on the fragility of democracy and how what once happened in Central America continues to spread across regions. “We believe that as a society our rights are safeguarded and our institutions strengthened; however, it is clear that we must continue to work in all areas of society to put collective interests ahead of individualism,” he told the Observer.
In elaborating on these themes, Romero uses a highly allegorical and largely symbolic visual language. His characters read almost like shadows, inhabiting a vague, liminal space. They blend into tropical forests and camouflage themselves in the landscape, a vague presence that belongs as much to the subconscious or collective nightmare as it does to tangible reality. He explained that he was more interested in developing an artistic language than a style. “That’s exactly what I do: use images to create metaphors that convey meaning and a sense of time.”
Romero relies on recurring symbols across multiple series. exist TropicaliaFor example, in the black-and-white landscapes he painted, palm trees are the only element, a choice that gives the images a retro, distant quality that evokes memories of the past like movie stills. Repeatedly, the palm tree also becomes a metaphor for a unified whole. “It presents a seemingly idyllic scene, like a beach postcard, but underlying an unsettling atmosphere… just like now,” he said. The palm tree also evokes cultural stereotypes of the Global South, becoming a symbol of a region that still faces postcolonial socioeconomic and environmental struggles today.
Romero, whose work can be found at the Reina Sofía National Art Center, MOLAA, and the Colección Mario Cader-Frech and Poma Family Collection in Miami, initially painted a variety of trees when he began studying landscapes. However, as his research progressed, he realized that the landscape we perceive is also a narrative of power—a structure that shapes how we live and use space. From then on, he specialized in painting palm trees. “They are a metaphor for the homogenization of ideas and a testament to colonization, understandable in both historical and contemporary contexts,” he said. Tropical beaches in their natural state have a diverse flora, but this diversity is lost once the site is developed for the hotel industry. “Suddenly, like Miami – dotted with palm trees – the landscape becomes homogeneous and becomes a ‘non-place’. It transforms into a liminal space where the experience is unified and differences are diluted.”
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“Mirror” |
Romero said that while this may seem to offer greater convenience, it imposes a specific way of entering and experiencing the environment. This model eliminates differences and eliminates opportunities to learn from others, who are viewed as undesirable or uncomfortable. “The landscape has become a postcard.”
In Kates-Ferri Projects, the entire installation is dominated by blue, which conveys, as he describes it, an “unsettling” sense of tranquility. “Psychologically, it evokes stability and trust, which is why political parties often incorporate it into their symbols and flags. It’s a color that relaxes us and draws our eyes to the sky, making it the perfect choice for this collection.”
Blue has long been associated with strength. In the Middle Ages it was difficult to obtain and therefore expensive. “If a patron commissioned a painter to use blue, it showed their power and status,” Romero said. During colonial times in Mesoamerica, blue fueled economic development through the mining of añil or indigo, known as blue gold. The dye is extracted from the jiquilite plant, and the province of San Salvador dominates production in Central America. Since the region was governed by the Metropolitan of Guatemala, which itself was part of the Kingdom of Spain, blue was a color imbued with a history of power and resource extraction for Romero. “It’s the perfect color to talk about power, extractivism and manipulation,” he added.
The residency allowed him to trace connections between the two states of New York and California. part of Tropicalia The series is on display at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, which this year also acquired two works from the series. At MOLAA, Romero “constructed a narrative about power and the human traces it leaves behind. At Kates-Ferri, I created a site-specific narrative – an exhibition that confronts the viewer with a concrete figure as they move through the space. When Natalie Kates invited me to participate in the planning of the gallery, I felt extremely lucky to be able to work in this context – and to shape the space from the perspective of a global context that shapes the way we live.”
Romero describes the installation as a cinematic environment in which viewers are immersed in a vast narrative unfolding within a diorama-like structure. “I work in series; I rarely make paintings that have unrelated themes,” he explains. Working continuously allows him to shape the characters and the world they inhabit. “Some have their faces obscured, some wear cones on their heads – almost parodic – or have their faces painted blue like stage actors, while some look just blurry; everyone plays a role, sometimes indeterminate, sometimes, they cross paths and coexist.” The settings follow the same logic: low-key, almost nondescript interiors contrasted with lush exteriors. “It’s like an unfolding film, opening new chapters as it progresses; there’s a certain cinematic quality to the series.” Although drawing remains his primary language, he has recently begun making video works with movement and sound.
He designed a layout for the exhibition that allows for both conceptual and chronological reading. “Upon entering the exhibition, one sees a portrait at eye level; gazing at it, we don’t just look – we ‘transform’ into the artwork itself,” Romero points out. The path continues through a black and white landscape arranged like a theatrical backdrop, its “mirror” landscape composed of layered paintings. “It starts with a canvas with a blue camouflage pattern and a central portrait, shown front and side, reminiscent of police photos, then moves through a storm scene before finally meeting the figures at the end of the path.”
Romero’s work has always been about politics, but this exhibition invites viewers to compare Central America’s political history with the current situation in the United States. “Above all, artists are citizens who sense the turbulence of our times, especially in an interconnected world,” he reflects. “I approach these issues from the context of my life; my perspective is not limited there. The shift to the far right is a global phenomenon, evident in narratives of war and intolerance and the growing criminalization of difference. This is deeply worrying and I believe art must bear witness to this.”