04.07.2026 –
04.10.2026
MELANIE ENDER – Solo exhibition in the East Wing
Opening: 4 July 2026
Doors open at 11 am, welcome address at 3 pm
About the exhibition
Melanie Ender, an artist from Austria, whose sculptural practice is process-oriented and based on working routines as well as an intensive engagement with material, has been invited to explore the former studio of the sculptor Arno Breker – now Kunsthaus Dahlem – as a site of artistic production and historical layering. In dialogue with the architectural and historical context, she develops new works that continue her interest in materials as carriers of history and examine their integration into contemporary narratives.
Curator: Yevheniia Havrylenko (Kunsthaus Dahlem)
Historical layers of the site
The building of Kunsthaus Dahlem, constructed between 1939 and 1942, was originally conceived as a studio for the sculptor Arno Breker and was intended as a place for the creation of works that embodied National Socialist ideology. After the Second World War, the building was used by numerous German and international artists as a guest studio. Of importance is the long-standing work of the sculptor Bernhard Heiliger in the East Wing from 1949 to 1995.
More about the history of the building is available here and in the following sections.
Melanie Ender – biography
Melanie Ender is a visual artist. She studied from 2006 to 2013 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In recent years, she has lived and worked within the framework of residency programs, among others in Istanbul, Turin, Rome, and Mexico City.
Her artistic works emerge from an intensive engagement with material, which she understands as an animate counterpart in the working process. Through often minimalist gestures, she brings forth the inherent aesthetics and properties of various materials, as well as their potential for transformation in the form of sculpture, text, and installation.
In 2022 and 2023, she received the Austrian State Scholarship for Fine Arts as well as the Promotion Prize of the City of Vienna. Her works are represented in private and public collections. Since 2009, her work has been presented nationally and internationally by galleries, at art fairs, and in museums such as Belvedere 21, Neue Galerie Graz – Museum Joanneum, Wien Museum MUSA, within the framework of the international gallery festival curated by, as well as in numerous independent exhibition spaces.