| | In keeping with their ambiguous content, the paintings' formal elements are not formulaic. Standard answers would be reassuring and tired; Birmelin eschews conventional solutions for pictorial organization in favor of vertiginous perspective, disjunctures in scale, and abruptly altered fields of focus. The overall effect is one of scanning and movement on the part of viewer and image alike. In galleries, the interaction between the paintings and their audience is palpable. The works invite the observer to move to and fro, which also is to say that the paintings project their space out of the frame and into our world. | |
