Robert Cahen
«Tombe»

The exhibition «Robert Cahen s’installe» (1998 in Sélestat, Alsace) marked Cahen’s transition from the video tape to video installation. In the tall format, circa 15-minute-long silent projection entitled «Tombe,» Robert Cahen’s wizardry rests on the creation of a decelerated series of 26 levitating and falling things, toys, objects—in a dreamlike state, as though enraptured in a blue underwater world. «In the connecting spaces, one sees only a dimensionless blue void, and the visible raw material of the pixels from which Cahen created the encyclopedia of his last images. This projected alphabet of phantom objects in which even people are no more than fallen angels is both framed and larger than life. Because of the work’s monumentality, the position of the viewer can only be directly in front of the work, rapt in awe, fixed—amazed. Casting a spell on the viewer’s gaze, an essential stylistic element from the magic box of tricks, strengthens the slowness of the series.»
(Source: Rudolf Frieling, «Die letzten Bilder», in: Robert Cahen s’installe, FRAC Alsace, 1998, pp. 44–47.)