MIRIAM TÖLKE

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MIRIAM TÖLKE

MIRIAM TÖLKE

Mirjam Tölke’s pictures are poetry: complex, surreal, subtle and profoundly feminine. Some of the collages seem to “rhyme”; others assemble layer upon layer, sentence upon sentence, at times fading into infinity. 

"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." 
Miriam Tölke, 2019.

The young Berlin artist joined the roster of photographers represented by the Bildhalle in late 2019 and has already made a successful appearance in two group shows. We had planned more extensive presentations at the Paper Position Berlin in May and at Photo Basel in June 2020. 
Instead, we have the pleasure of announcing a one-minute video, which Tölke produced for us with filmmaker Britt Dunse, about her work and life in the studio at Uckermark, where she retired in the wake of the Corona crisis.

Take a look at the one-minute video: 






Miriam Tölke studied Painting at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. Nowadays, she lives and works as a mother of four in Berlin. 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.