Our In Focus series spotlights a single artwork from the MÍRAME roster, unpacking the layers of meaning, context, and connection behind it. Each edition is an opportunity to explore how one piece speaks to wider conversations in Costa Rica’s art scene, and beyond.

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In Focus : Leonardo Ureña's The Urban Series

Over the last two weeks, we’ve written about San José as a cultural destination, from its museums and galleries, to project spaces and events. This week, I want to pause that wide-angle view and focus in. Out of Leonardo Ureña’s expansive Urban Series, there’s one photograph I keep returning to - see below.

It’s an image that, for me, distills the layered, complex, and surprisingly magnetic nature of San José, Costa Rica’s capital city.

Leonardo Ureña, San José, from the Urban Series

Why This Image

All the photographs in Ureña’s Urban Series move through San José with the instinct of someone who knows it from the inside out. Born in the city in 1984, Ureña grew up absorbing its sounds, textures, and rhythms, an experience that inevitably shaped the way it became a constant subject in his work.

In this image, the eye is first pulled to the brightly coloured horizontal edging of a roof in the mid-ground; it's a sharp line of pigment that cuts across the composition and anchors the frame. From there, details begin to unfold: rooftops forming a fractured patchwork of sun-bleached tin beside fresh corrugation; splashes of faded paint set against bare concrete; a hotel sign jutting into view; satellite dishes tilting at odd angles; streetlamps looping above, implying pavements below; mismatched windows hinting at decades of improvised renovation.

If you look closely, you can even make out a narrow strip of concrete street with a motorbike edging into view; the motorbike is almost camouflaged by the buildings around it. The way this sliver of road blends into the architecture speaks to how tightly the city’s structures press together.

This central burst of colour becomes a pivot point between order and disarray, between what is intentional and what has simply accumulated over time. You can almost hear the hum of traffic below, catch the flicker of conversation, feel the uneven pavement underfoot. This composition moves between sharp detail and the everyday, creating an image that doesn’t just show San José but lets you sense it as a city in flux.

The dense layering of architecture and the jumble of colours echo scenes found in many Latin American cities, which are typically full of movement, improvisation, and visual rhythm. Yet this is unmistakably San José, with its own pace, palette, and idiosyncrasies.

San José in Context

San José is a city in motion. The metropolitan area is home to nearly 2.2 million people, which is over a third of the country’s population. And it’s expanding. Development in recent years has brought glass-fronted offices, new transport links, and residential projects aimed at a growing middle class.

At the same time, older neighbourhoods like Barrio Amón or Barrio Otoya still carry the patina of early 20th-century architecture, with ornate wooden balconies and tiled porticos now standing alongside repair shops, street vendors, and contemporary cafés.

This mix understandably comes with challenges. The city has long wrestled with questions of urban equality, such as which areas receive infrastructure investment, and which are left to adapt more informally. Yet these contrasts also give San José its visual rhythm and it's what we love about visiting.

Ureña’s vantage point across his Urban Series turns the city into a layered conversation. In this image, the walls carry their own timelines, with fresh paint laid over decades of earlier colour. Some façades are scrubbed and sharp; others are worn, weathered, and quietly fading.

Seen from above, the architecture takes on the language of geometric abstraction, with blocks of colour, lines of corrugated tin, and sudden flashes of pigment. The result is a composition that feels immediate and tactile, alive with the visual energy of San José.

Why It Matters Now

In the context of our recent blogs about San José’s art and cultural life, this image celebrates the city’s visual identity because while it's shaped by its institutions, it's also written on the streets, and in the uncurated textures that locals pass each day. For visitors, this means that the art of San José is not confined to its galleries. For residents, it’s a validation of the value in everyday spaces.

Out of Ureña’s many compelling images in his Urban Series, this one, to me, feels like a key to understanding San José. It’s not the polished San José of glossy travel features, but the lived-in, ever-evolving city that leaves its mark on you. It’s the San José you carry with you, whether you’re walking its streets or sitting miles away on a Guanacaste beach under the shade of a palm tree.

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