"Birkner is less concerned with social and cultural interpretation than with representing the vitality of memory, nostalgia, and perception. As David Cohen states, “Mr. Birkner’s sharply observed, chromatically inventive, compositionally ambitious social scenes have a slow-burning sexuality that rhymes with the bluesy resignation of the depressed town, threatening freeway encounters and proletarian amusements he depicts.” - Gerald Peters, "Tom Birkner" "Tom Birkner's paintings tell us fragments of stories: they are an incipit, hints, tranches de vie of humanity in the process of decay [...]. Birkner tells us about the tragedy of the modern way, about its survival in spite of the thousand lights of postmodernism. [...] There are some elements that characterize Birkner's painting. One of them I would like to call the Poetics of the detail. His subjects and his compositions alaways receive life from a detail - a detail that is not always or necessarily the one in the centre of the scene or, so to speak, represented. It is a detail that could appear at first sight insignificant [...]. However, that detail, insignificant as it may seem, is, in reality, precisely what gives power to the scene, makes it dramatic, provides a possible key [...] and an (im)possible explanation of the many infinite scenes that may happen in front of our eyes every day." - Alessandro Riva, "Tom Birkner"

RIVA, Alessandro, "Tom Birkner", Marella Arte Contemporanea, 1998, p. 2.

Sitography: GERALD PETERS, "Tom Birkner", www.gpgallery.com
gpgallery.com/artist/tom-birkner/