"I take everything out of context, collect, rearrange, put together loose parts, mixing materials and techniques. I create my own order out of the chaos of abundance. I am a flaneur. That's why I live in the city mostly. I love to study people, faces, gestures, movements. Nature gives me horizon. Be naive in everything you do. The pictures are there - listen."Miriam Tölke
Miriam Tölke studied painting at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart.
She completed her studies in 2000 and moved to Berlin. Already in her time in Stuttgart, she began to collect discarded things: magazines, notebooks, catalogs, books. Paper that has been deemed useless by others, but for her of incredible value. A treasure hunt in the city, which she continued in Berlin where she lives for many years now.
Tölke collects, explores and observes, placing her findings in a new context with striking, minimalist verve. Thus glossy pictures combined with landscape images become bizarre and irritating portraits that seem to reflect an inner world, creating a spiritual landscape, indicative of both the artist's poetic way of thinking as well as today's zeitgeist. In her pictures, there is always an element of calm, of pausing, which is initially unsettling, before unfolding its profound effect and finally eliciting a smile.