Melanie Ender
F3, 2025
Gentle yet intentional tapping and holding are familiar, commonly performed movements connecting the physical body with the digital flow of information. These points of contact open up the daily search for more knowledge, images to be enlarged and minimized, texts to be copied, contents to be shared and expressly appreciated. From a material viewpoint, they leave hardly a trace, no residue. Scratches, on the other hand, penetrate the surface and inscribe themselves; they perforate and injure it. Scratching is a pre-digital medium that must do damage to the material in order to assert its presence. It is also an analog means of communication whose inscription leaves shapes and signs. These may be the marks of injury and vulnerability, but within a larger semiotic framework, they convey meaning even to the point of representing writing.
The title of Melanie Ender’s first exhibition at the Gallery Krobath is a guideline, albeit a metaphorical one. The artist’s creative process follows from her contemplations of tactility, from interactions with the material through touch, gestures, and markings. She finds her building material—mostly scrap metal—in junk yards and estates, and she examines and re-encodes it in a vigorous physical interaction: through holding and heating, bending and grinding, drilling and weighing, and repositioning it. This active approach of the artist stands in contrast to the material’s seemingly passive letting itself be held, heated, bent, grounded, drilled, weighed, and repositioned.
Yet in Ender’s most recent work, her chosen material comes alive and can be seen as an active counterpart in the sense of American political scientist and philosopher Jane Bennett’s vital materialism (Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things, 2009). This is especially apparent in her work with rust, not to be confused with patina. Rust is the symptom of a chemical oxidation process, in which three components meet and mingle: iron, oxygen, and water. While patina forms the outer layer of its object, at times protecting it, rust penetrates deeply into the substance and forms an equivalent to the above discussed scratches. It is progressively able to corrode its metallic material beyond recognition.
Ender puts the liveliness of this inexorable corrosive process into a physical relation between objects and arrangements of symbols. She rubs the fine dust of rust from the corroded metal surfaces directly on her canvases to form abstract, intuitively placed traces. The dissolved and porous iron oxide pigments, alternating between orange-red and brown tones, reflect the depth of the abrasive layers. The partly abraded and therefore almost clean metal objects in turn are arranged by the artist into spatial installations that are caught in a fragile balance between temporary stillness and the permanence of their own weight. Or they serve the two-dimensional image carriers as prostheses-like apparatuses and articulate precisely constructed lines pointing yet again to the relevance of language and sign systems. Ender’s previously seldom shown drawings also display her profound preoccupation with rhythm, semiotics, and tactility. gently tap, hold and scratch ultimately refers back to her performative labor in that the delicate work of the artist is inextricably linked to the sculptural qualities of the produced constellations.
Andrea Kopranovic
(English translation: A. Flury & M. Taban)
Works
Works
Biography
lives and works in Vienna (AT).
1984 born in Vienna (AT).
2006 – 2013 University of Applied Arts Vienna (Gabreiele Rothemann, Hans SChabus)
2013 Diploma University of Applied Arts Vienna
Awards
2023 Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien
2022 Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien
2022 Staatsstipendium für Bildende Kunst (BKA Kunst und Kultur)
Solo Exhibiton
| 2025 | gently tap, hold and scratch, Galerie Krobath, Vienna, AT |
| 2024 | never exhausted semiotics, Kunstraum Super, Vienna |
| 2021 | mittig unten oben links, Neue Galerie Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum |
| smooth, so surface! oh yeah…, MUSA Startgalerie, Vienna | |
| 2016 | shaping thoughts of stone, kaeshmaesh, Vienna |
| 2014 | Ludo, Galrie artunited, Vienna |
| 2013 | Räumlicher Rekonstruktivismus oder die Instabilität des Raumes, Offspace Spenglerei, Vienna |
More…
Less…
Group Exhibiton
| 2025 | Irregular News, (Sofie Thorsen, Jenni Tischer, Melanie Ender) Petra Rinck Galerie, Düsseldorf |
| 2024 | a suitcase project, picture gallery New York Material.Leidenschaft, Wienmuseum MUSA, Vienna |
| 2023 | Od Œuvre de Pampelmuse, Galaxie Neuer Künste, Halle an der Saale |
| 2022 | MEGA, casalu, Ausstellung und Residency Aufenthalt, Mexico City |
| 2021 | ippst, ippst (siehe ipst, ipt) (Melanie Ender, Sebastian Koch), Dock20, Lustenau |
| Sprachbilder I Bildsprache, Galerie untitled projects, Vienna | |
| Konkrete Poesie und so, Kunsthaus Mürz, Perfomative Reading | |
| 2020 | PFERD-openstage, Pferd. Forum Wien |
| Sculpture Garden, Galerie Kandlhofer, Klosterneuburg | |
| Über das Neue, Belvedere 21 | |
| 2018 | to open closed forms, unttld contemporary, Wien |
| 2017 | fall session, CRYPTA 747, Turin |
| TYPE, PLEASE! curated by Sabine Folie / Vienna 2017, Galerie Raum mit Licht | |
| SPATIAL CONCEPTS, Ausstellung und Performance: parting the square, Fotogalerie Wien | |
| 2016 | Dienstag Abend -> No. 84, Wejherowska 34, Wrocław, Polen |
| TOPIA, Pferd. Forum Wien | |
| 2015 | to space to place, Schleifmühlgasse 12-14, Wien |
| SUPER EDITION #4, Kunstraum SUPER, Wien /EKKISENS Art Space Reykjavik | |
| #4 Reports from species of spaces, curated by Sabine Folie, wellwellwell, Wien | |
| 2014 | on behalf in the midst of the group, Kunstraum SUPER, Wien |
| 2013 | B=H+M=K+S=K=Ex=, Friday Exit, Studios Sammlung Lenikus, Bauernmarkt 9, Wien |
| The Essence, Künstlerhaus Wien | |
| Skulpturinstitut, an der Hülben 3, Wien | |
| 2012 | Realm, Heiligenkreuzerhof, Wien |
| 2011 | The Essence, MAK |
| no more luggage, Cistern Galleries, Tophane-I Amire Culture and Arts Center Istanbul | |
| 2010 | Les Nuits Blanches, das wiesse haus, Vienna |
| unORTnung VI, ehemaliges kartografische Insitut Wien | |
| 2009 | A Piece of Water, Künstlerhaus Wien |
| Zwischenspiel II, Vertikale Galerie, Wien |
More…
Less…