MALTESE DIPTYCH
TWO SHOWS, ONE STORY .
A groundbreaking two-exhibition project, curated by Ms. Melanie Erixon. The Maltese Diptych Project was Launched in May 2025. This ambitious project was hosted across two of Malta's most iconic venues: Spazju Kreattiv and MUZA. Amrhein presents two contrasting yet interconnected artistic visions of our planet's future, showcasing two formally different bodies of work. The two shows, envisioned and realized through the aesthetic of schematic drawings utilize a wide range of medium to express specific ideas.
This project is supported by the Arts Council Malta.
Dystopian Garden
Spazju Kreattiv, Malta, May/June 2025.
The first exhibition of the Maltese Diptych project immersed visitors in a surreal botanical world, featuring over 50 new artworks —primarily site-specific —where mechanical plants inspired by endangered flora seamlessly blend art, architecture, engineering, and technology.
The opulent atrium space at Spazju Kreattiv made for the perfect exhibition location. Its unique setting, featuring a soaring glass ceiling, an elegant spiral staircase and a 20 foot tall living palm tree, these elements combined to inspire a vision of a lavish greenhouse in a botanical garden. The artists, Mechanical Botanical drawings were highlighted by an imposingly tall “Slow Growth Palm Tree”, an 'orchidarium' of over 30 species of mechanical Orchids and a small grouping of synthetic, endangered flower “replacements”. Several sculptures, video pieces, and prints directly linked to the schematic drawings helped to accentuate the conservatory inspiration the space provided. A particularly engaging element to the mechanical orchid series featured in Malta was Amrhein's inclusion of 28 other artists in the form of collaborations during the development of what became his “Hybrid Orchids”. This dynamic intersection between concept and creation dates back to Amrhein's first mechanical orchid triptych in 2014. The exhibition presents an imagined and frighteningly plausible future where machines become a necessary replacement for much of our natural environment. The balance between nature and encroaching technology is already at risk, “Dystopian Garden” provides a platform of contemplation on where we choose to go from here.
3D Blueprintnetwork
malta test station
Muża, Malta , July/August 2025.
At the heart “3D Blueprint Malta Test Station” is a striking architectural dialogue: a contemporary, minimalist echo of the approximately 25-foot-high 18th-century Baroque triumphal arch found within MUŻA’s courtyard. Installed in Pjazza Jean de Vallette, directly outside the museum’s side entrance, this imagined environmental machine, both sculptural and schematic, becomes a divergent twin to the original arch. Together, they form a visual and conceptual “diptych,” bridging centuries, architectural styles, and climate awareness in a poetic exchange across time.
As a direct contour, a half-cylinder 3D Blueprint sculpture placed on the limestone floor of the museum's courtyard becomes a companion to the historical arch, providing an interface between two elements separated by time. Its architectural relationship serves as a spatial and symbolic marker, a trace of a structure reimagined through time, acting as a metaphor for continuity, deconstruction,and transformation.
Additionally, inside MUŻA, located at the community gallery space, approximately 20 sculptural works form a motherboard network, blue-and-white schematic objects assembled from repurposed forms. A display screen presents stop motion animations of the small sculptures as products. These 360 degree animated presentations shift the context of the sculptures as 3D Blueprints and showcases them in a style that promotes their potentiality as a device ready for manufacturing, purchase and implementation. Aesthetically tied to the exterior objects, these intricate, speculative machines suggest alternative systems of environmental repair, grounded in the belief that we already possess the Ingenuity and knowledge to confront the climate crisis, what remains is the will to activate it.
Curated by Melanie Erixon and project managed by Pacci Taub, 3D Blueprint Network: Malta Test Station enters into dialogue with the Auberge d’Italie. This architectural palimpsest has witnessed centuries of stylistic and structural transformation, from its Mannerist origins under Girolamo Cassar to later Baroque interventions. Amrhein’s installation adds a contemporary layer to this continuum, reimagining the space as both site and symbol of ongoing artistic evolution.