text by Sabine Folie 

#4 REPORTS FROM SPECIES OF SPACES, 2015

 

Melanie Ender departs from a rather tectonic understanding of bodies in space— constructed entities, figures if you want, actually variations of a modular system assembled to different “characters“. Although made of material such as MDF and paint in a traditional sense Raumkörper adopt a seemingly virtual fashion as if they were digitized quasi-animated architectural monuments. Like folded, they evolve from modules drawn on a plain sheet of paper, so they could easily morph back into that same plain surface where, for example, the body of the artist in Entern on the other hand measures space performing, inscribing her body literally into space, while marking the margin of her body from a fixed standpoint in drawing a circle. A circle that comes up in another piece: posture, a domestic and to some extent ritual tool being transformed into a form out of concrete, not lacking a portion of monumental gesture. The rosé color gracefully and delicately counteracts this monumentality, so does a rope—a similar rope, which fixes the artist’s body in the center of the space mentioned—draped on the floor, inconspicuous and yet so determined in its austerity. We leave out some words from the sentence and get to Phrase, an allegorical micro setting with an eclectic sculpture of classicist allure: a pedestal in form of an upright square, where a fragment of the artist’s and dancer’s foot is posed in take-off position but still in touch with the platform, followed by an enigmatic half-worked granite stone. This Phrase is one of more possible forms to connect the language with the body, another one is presented by the artist in suggestive phrases printed on white linen such as She Urged Him to Bomb or So Soaked in Wet.

 

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