DAVID BROGNON & STÉPHANIE ROLLIN

The artists David Brognon and Stéphanie Rollin, who work collaboratively, have different but complementary approaches to making art. Brognon works instinctively, and regards the act of creation
as a game. Rollin has a poetic sensibility and a more theoretical approach. A recurrent motif in their rigorous minimalist work is the sensitive contrast between the material and the immaterial world.
Their installations and videos are determined by their interest in marginal subject matter and issues relating to the fringes of society. While playing with double meanings and multiple references,
their work presents the visitor with ambiguous situations marked by the tension between individual experiences and social conventions. Their fascination for ruthless systems of confinement and control is translated here into a work that refers to the prison system and alludes to the confines of our existence in an alienated society. In 8m2 Loneliness (2012-2013) they meticulously analyse and define the relation of
time and space in a situation of confinement. A room of eight metres square, the size of a standard prison cell, defines the work’s spatial parameters. Inside one sees a large upright clock, made out of aluminium
and supplied with a movement detector. Whenever someone enters the room, the clock stops and it starts running again when the room is left empty. It only resumes the time when no one is around. The clock counts the time of a prisoner in his cell of two by four metres, doing time. The installation unites two inextricable elements under these conditions:
the limits of incarceration and the passage of time.
We are introduced into a world not only in which time seems to be suspended, but also where the notion of time is reduced to a very limited frame regarding the physical experience of the world. Under these
circumstances, the only escape is through the mind.