BIRMELIN

Artist Bio

Robert Birmelin's dense and unsettling views of interiors peopled by ominously large suitcases, clocks, books, telephones, and toys, serve as explorations of the artist's childhood memories and the nature of memory itself. This new series, titled "Opening the Door," departs from Birmelin's "street scenes" -- views of the chaotic motion and emotion of Manhattan street life -- from the 1980's.

The result are 'reversible' canvases in which top and bottom carry equal weight in the composition, offering conflicting interpretations of the scene and highlighting the tricks of emotional memory. Author and critic John Yau writes, "Birmelin has extended a wide and various array of formal means . . . into an area largely forsaken by postwar American painters; testimony of the anguish, wounds, stigma, and dissidence festering in the heart of every family . . . "

Birmelin's work is represented in museum collections nationwide and is featured in Edward Lucie-Smith's Art Today (Phaidon,1995), among others.

View other galleries: