Miriam Tölke studied Painting at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. Nowadays, she lives and works in Berlin with her family.
The artist assembles images from magazines with found objects, scraps of paper or fragments from her accumulated picture archive. In this analog process, she collects, explores, and observes, placing her findings strikingly and minimalistically into a new context. Thus glossy pictures combined with landscape images become bizarre and irritating portraits that seem to reflect an inner world. A spiritual landscape, reflecting both the artist’s poetic way of thinking as well as today’s zeitgeist. In Tölkes pictures, there is always an element of calm, of pausing, which is initially unsettling, before unfolding its profound effect and finally eliciting a smile.
Miriam Tölke, 2019:
»I take everything out of context, rearrange it, reconfigure loose pieces, mix materials and techniques, create a new order out of the chaos of abundance. I am a rambler, spend most of my time in the city and love studying people, places, gestures and movements. Nature gives me the horizon in front of which all parts come together.«
»Be naive in everything you do. The pictures are there – listen.«