Beer as a landscape and material

I like beer. I am not alone – around 177.5 million kiloliters of beer are consumed worldwide each year. In Finland, the average annual consumption is approximately 72 litres per person – a considerable amount, yet only half of the impressive 184 litres per capita consumed in the Czech Republic. 

Beer is one of humanity’s oldest beverages, with a history stretching back thousands of years. The word “beer” derives from Germanic languages (bier, birra) and is connected to the Latin verb bibere, meaning “to drink.” In ancient Egypt, beer was offered to the gods, and today it is enjoyed from Svalbard to New Zealand. 

Beer has played a role in sparking new sciences and innovations such as refrigeration, pasteurisation, and microbiology. It is woven into politics and culture – by some accounts, it may even have been the very driving force behind human civilisation itself. 

But what is beer? 

In this exhibition, beer reveals itself as an artistic material. Paintings on canvas are created with beer itself – stout, saison, pilsner, IPA, and Kveik each take shape as their own unique material and landscape.

​The exhibition is also a process: during its course, new beer paintings will be created in front of the audience. Visitors are invited to witness the making of these works and to discuss the meanings carried by different beers. 

The information on artistic outputs in the Aalto Research Portal follows the reporting guidelines of Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture. Therefore, each contribution requiring independent artistic activity is reported separately. For full details of the work and its contributors, please refer to information provided by the publisher.