Portrait of the artist. © Miriam Stanke
The œuvre of German artist Myriam Holme consciously breaks with tradition and is chiefly characterised by deliberate paradoxes: the artist’s metal works, for example, have clearly been created using great force, bending and deforming the material – and yet they have a delicate appearance, seemingly light as a feather.
Holme is testing the boundaries of painting and attempts to explore them anew. Her artworks can more properly be classified as hybrids that move between the genres of painting, collage, sculpture and installation. They leave the flatness of the canvas and enter three-dimensional space.
Instead of sticking to oil and acrylic paints, Holmes‘ repertoire of media ranges from metals, plastic, varnishes and stains to soaps and even gold leaf, which she combines in unconventional ways: soap on canvas, plastic with gold leaf, or hammered metal with ink.
Typical for Holme, her work deals not only with artistic traditions and material culture, but also, through their ambiguity, they touch on current socio-political or ecological issues.
The artist's works shine, sparkle, blend and reflect; they are burnished and bent. They testify to strength and lightness as well as an intrinsic sophistication.
Myriam Holme was born in 1971 and completed her studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in 2002 as a master student of Professor Andreas Slominski. After guest professorships at the art academies in Karlsruhe, Munich and Mainz, she held a teaching position at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 2018.
Her works have been shown in exhibitions and projects in Europe, Asia and the USA, for example at the Qingdao Sculpture Museum in Qingdao (China), the Arthouse in Los Angeles (USA), the musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux (France), the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen (Germany) and the Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany). Her works are also represented in private collections, including that of Carlo Piccioni and the Zabludowicz Collection, to name but two.