Origin: Medellín, Colombia

Based in: Colombia

Year of birth: 1986

Andrés Layos is a Colombian artist whose practice explores the emotional and symbolic language of water. Born in Medellín in 1986, he has developed a body of work in which the sea becomes both subject and metaphor: a space of contradiction, introspection, and transformation, where calm and chaos, depth and surface, emptiness and fullness can exist at once.

His paintings are often guided by an atmospheric and reflective sensibility, using layered surfaces and expressive mark-making to evoke states of feeling rather than fixed narrative. Across his work, water functions not simply as a visual motif, but as a conceptual field through which questions of silence, memory, and the unconscious are explored.

Layos has exhibited internationally, and his work has been presented in gallery contexts that position him within a wider contemporary Latin American conversation. A previous Artsy exhibition text also notes his collaborative work with his daughter, Valentina Layos, reflecting a practice that extends beyond solo production into shared forms of image-making.