LAURA LOWE

MATERIA LIQUIDA

Group exhibition
Instituto Iberoamericano de Finlandia, Madrid
5 March – 14 May 2026

Opening during ARCO week on Thursday 5 March at 18–20 
and artist talk on Tuesday 10 March at 18–19.
 

MATERIA LIQUIDA is a group exhibition that examines the boundaries of painting by considering its experiential, material and sensory nature. It brings together works by five contemporary Finnish artists — Laura Hetemäki, Juliana Hyrri, Laura Lowe, Sirkku Rosi, and Niina Villanueva — whose practices centre on painting. These five Finnish painters are united by an inexhaustible curiosity for materials, as well as for the theoretical and material continuum of painting. Through their works, they explore—both individually and collectively—what it means to be human, and more specifically, what it means to be a visual artist and painter in our time. Painting functions as a space in which thought emerges through material, where history, the present and the body become intertwined. Why paint at a time when everything seems to collapse into a slippery and elusive disorder?

Materia liquida brings together the artists’ different approaches to the material essence of painting and its capacity to engage with profound human and ecological questions. The works on display challenge the traditional idea of painting as a purely visual form of expression, revealing it instead as a realm in which matter, sensation and meaning merge.


Introductory essay by curator Manuela Pedrón Nicolau.


Supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.