From John Yau's article, "How we Live--Paintings by Robert Birmelin, Eric Fischl, and Ed Paschke," Artforum
	In depicting an instance of crowds moving past and through our perceptual field, Birmelin allows us to contemplate the turmoil imbedded in every moment of urban life. Tunnel vision is no longer an option. Instead, his compositions parallel the all inclusive eye of a movie camera. However, it should also be pointed out that Birmelin never resorts to mechanical aids. The paintings are based on sketches done from memory. They are complex reenactments: they address the fact that the world never quite corresponds to the shape of our perceptions.
	From Donald Kuspit's Essay "Robert Birmelin's Split Reality," Catalogue, the Claude Bernard Gallery
	What finally counts in a Birmelin picture is not the observed detail but the tension--flamboyant bipolarization--of the spatial structure, that is, the way the picture is divided against itself. This suggests incommensurate levels of awareness, perhaps even perpetually conflicting orders of reality....The paradox of Birmelin's pictures is that he uses forcefully explicit observations to make a basic psychic structure transparent and ominous. This universal structure necessarily displays itself in a theatrical way, because it is inherently dramatic: the divided space articulates the structural split in the modern self--the very split that defines it as modern.