The long side of the darkened room is taken up by a projection screen, which is surroun­ded by a large, vertical-format picture frame like a painting. Video images are projected onto this screen. After long breaks of blue noise, different objects repeatedly appear in the top part of the screen. There may be two dozen of them all told. Their selection and the unusual perspectives they offer are surprising. They consist of everyday items such as toys, kitchen utensils and items of clothing and are all deprived of their original func­tion. They glide inexorably past and slip out of sight into unknown depths. The cool and seemingly coarse-grained blue of the projection dominates the mood in the room. ‘Tombe’ in French means grave and is also the 3rd person singular of the verb ‘tomber’, to fall. The picture area looks like a window offering a view ofan exteriorzone which sug­gests neither spatial distance nor human security. It could be a canal or a shaft which allows the current to flow in one direction only - the sometimes restrained, sometimes irresistible tug of the deep. You feel like putting your hand in the column of water, touching things one last time before their final, silent disappearance and perhaps saving them from being dashed to pieces. But all such efforts are in vain. Tombe, like all Robert Cahen’s works, is pervaded by the ever topical attempt to address transitional stages, the areas between life and death, the flow of time, absence and recollection and is expressed in his characteristic pictorial language.