David is a painter, but without the paint.
He places his canvas in time, inviting the spectator into a mode of active contemplation.

How different was it to work in the space of Probe compared to other exhibition spaces?
In Probe the space and time of the exhibition is not the same as the space and time of the spectator. He is not physically present in the space. He is watching still pictures of the exhibition on his computer screen.
This has big consequences on the way I usually deal with the spectator within my work. I am placing him in a specific situation, within a specific timeframe where the frontier between him and the work of art is ever unclear, porous, shifting from immersion to distancing, from fascination to critique.

The images that constitute an edition of Probe are taken from 9 different spots in the space. As a series they freeze a moment in time.

What did you want to create in Probe?
I wanted time to pass between each image.
I wanted to see if it was possible to create an experience of duration for the spectator within the strict constraint of the series.
I wanted to do this by transposing a “natural” phenomenon (the change of light in a day) into the artificial environment of the white cube.

What obstacles did you run into?

At first I wanted to make duration feel by recreating a natural process in the space itself. I was looking for a plant or a set of plants that would slowly invade the space by each picture. So in the beginning (photo 1) there would only be one or two little plants in the space and at the end (photo 9) it would have become a jungle. But I couldn’t find a convincing set of plants that would match the particular scale of the space. So I decided to solve the problem solely with the use of light. Thanks to the reduced scale of Probe it was possible to recreate the light situation of an entire day from the outside of the space. I knew only very late in the process of the making, which motive I would place in the space. I placed a lot of plants and trees in Probe. At the end remained this one singular tree that somehow resembles a spiky burning bush.

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