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 has conceived delicate, site-specific installations for her exhibition at Kunsthaus Dahlem. Presented in the former studio of Arno Breker, one of the principal monumental sculptors of National Socialism, they resist any claim to permanence. The artist examines how structures designed for stability and control reveal, over time, their openness to transformation. Straight lines become distorted, seemingly stiff metal rods balance in fragile situations – Ender’s works remain sensitive and responsive to their surroundings. In this way, they dissolve rigid orders and allow processes of change to become tangible.
Curator: Yevheniia Havrylenko (Kunsthaus Dahlem)
Artist
Melanie Ender (*1984, Vienna) lives and works primarily in Vienna. Her sculptural practice is process-oriented and grounded in an intensive engagement with material as an active counterpart. Both for her exhibition at Kunsthaus Dahlem and in her recent works, she has increasingly focused on corroded steel and textiles. Through often minimalist gestures, she reveals these materials’ potential for change and transformation.
From 2006 to 2013, Ender studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. 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.