Mirjam Völker

In Mirjam Völker's paintings, we stand eye to eye with the remnants of a civilization overgrown by nature.
The houses, barracks and huts in her paintings are deserted: they have lost their original purpose – to give shelter and protection. Nature and civilization are in a field of tension. It seems as if the dwellings become a plaything of the vegetation. Yet her paintings are not located spatially nor temporally and do not refer to a concrete situation.
The interplay of overlapping materiality and dissolution leads – together with the combination of the extreme perspectives – to an impression of discomfort and instability. As chaotic and uncertain as the works appear, they contrast with the precision and accuracy with which Mirjam Völker creates her detailed paintings in acrylic and charcoal. In the process, quite different forms of vegetation-housing combinations emerge, in which one wonders what is proliferating into what, nature into the huts or the huts into nature? There is no final answer, only several interpretations possible, steaming from the viewer’s culture and experiences.

Mirjam Völker was born in 1977 in Wiesbaden and studied fine arts at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz and at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig under Neo Rauch, she lives and works in Leipzig.
She had several solo exhibitions in Germany, e.g. Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Kunsthalle Göppingen and Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden. Also she was part of national and international group shows, f.i. CRUX at the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle (Netherlands) or G2 Kunsthalle in Leipzig (Germany).

Submitted by Galerie EIGEN + ART