Malta’s newest hybrid art space, The Grist, has opened its doors within the redeveloped Brewhouse complex in Mrieħel. Located on the fourth floor of the historic brewery building, the space launched its exhibition programme on 25 September 2025 with New Arrangements, a solo exhibition by South African artist Nico Krijno, curated by Fabrizio Mifsud Soler.
The exhibition, presented in collaboration with Bored Peach Club, sets the tone for a new cycle of projects that will combine international dialogue with local experimentation.
A different approach to space
New Arrangements presents twelve works selected and installed with attention to clarity and spacing. Unlike the dense and highly decorated aesthetic often seen in Malta’s visual traditions, the exhibition avoids the fear of empty space. The gallery is not crowded, and the works are given room to stand on their own.
This deliberate use of openness becomes part of the encounter. The emptiness around the works creates pauses and intervals, and the experience of walking through the gallery is marked as much by what is absent as by what is present.
Works of erasure and transformation
The works on display continue this exploration of absence. Some of Krijno’s images are constructed through visible acts of erasure. Familiar motifs such as flowers, vases, and interiors appear interrupted, blurred, or fragmented, leaving behind traces that suggest what was once there.
In one grouping, a large flower collapses into folds of colour, accompanied by smaller images where blossoms fade into indistinct patches. In another, geometric distortions cut across photographs of still life arrangements, breaking them into uneven layers. A third set shows vases and vessels where the outlines ripple or dissolve, as if the image has been partially withheld.
The viewer is invited to complete these images with their own perception. The absence of detail becomes a vacuum to be filled by the eye and imagination. The mind supplies what is missing, reconstructing forms that are simultaneously there and not there.
Between photography and painting
Krijno’s practice operates between photography, painting, and collage. He begins with photographic material, often shot in analogue, then subjects it to digital manipulation, layering, and painterly interference. The result is not a fixed document but an image in flux.
In this exhibition, photographs of traditional still life subjects are folded, sliced, or destabilised. Vertical distortions stretch colours into bands, while horizontal interruptions break compositions into shifting planes. The treatment challenges the expectation of photography as a stable representation. Instead, each work suggests that the photographic image can be unstable, provisional, and open to reinterpretation.
Context and curatorial frame
The curatorial approach to New Arrangements emphasises both the specificity of Krijno’s practice and its resonance within Malta’s cultural context. By resisting over saturation and leaving space around the works, the exhibition runs counter to a visual culture where surfaces are often densely ornamented.
The erased or interrupted imagery also introduces a tension with memory and expectation. The works reference familiar forms such as flowers, domestic interiors, and vases, yet withhold them. Viewers recognise what should be there, but the absence demands imaginative labour. This encounter with erasure underscores the idea that images are never complete, and that meaning is built in the act of looking.
The artist
Born in 1981 in South Africa, Nico Krijno has developed an international reputation for testing the limits of photographic practice. His work balances construction and collapse, precision and improvisation. By folding photography into abstraction, he creates a body of work that unsettles the conventional boundaries of the medium.
Nico Krijno’s New Arrangements runs until November 7 at The Grist, The Brewhouse, Mrieħel