Seven wooden boxes at eye height jut into space. Within them are “seven fleeting visions”, seven poems made of images taken from China that the viewer navigates by adjusting his or her perspective in relation to the box. These boxes may symbolise telescopes that provide a view of a distant landscape. Are they not also coffins for fleeting visions, whose only memories remain preserved on videotape?

七個木箱在視角高度的空間中伸展出來。𥚃面是“七個轉瞬即逝的景象”，七首由一些攝於中國的影像組成的詩歌。觀賞者可自行調較與箱子之間的遠近來移動影像。這些箱子或可用作象徵遙望遠處景色的望遠鏡。其實，它們不都是 一些用來埋葬短暫景像的棺木嗎? 這些景像留下的僅是一些保存在錄影帶中的記憶。

Robert Cahen is a seminal figure in the European art realm and is firmly positioned and widely regarded as one of the most important personalities in the field of experimental video. In Cahen’s uniquely nuanced world, fiction and document alike are presented as metaphoric voyages of the imaginary, exquisite reveries that describe passages of time, place, memory and perception.

His research has been haunted by the notion of passing: passing from fixed image to moving image, passing from a place – and a time – to another, transformation of filmed reality and eye, exploration of sound related to the image. His approach is part of an always-renewed dialogue between visible and invisible, narration and poetry, distance and presence, confronting another world, a world made different – beautiful, disturbing by metamorphoses of time and space.

The Sight of Time exhibits major works of the artist, integrating these images to an installation device and introducing the visitor in the heart of imaginary landscapes. After earning a degree from the National Higher Conservatory of Music of Paris in 1971, Cahen trained as a composer and studied with Pierre Shaeffer. He became a member of the Musical research Group of ORTF (National French Radio and Television organization) and then took charge of experimental video research at INA (the National Audiovisual Institute) until 1976.

Since 1997, his works (video and video installations) have been shown all over the world in Contemporary Art Exhibitions such as Shanghai Art Museum (Biennial), MAMC of Strasbourg, Contemporary Art Museum of Santiago (Chile), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Video View Point) or the Documenta 8, Kassel.