In the current world of instant transmission of messages and social media posts, our messages lose their authentic, traveled, and timed qualities of the traditional modes of communication. Seung Jun’s “Carrier Pigeon,” a solo exhibition and immersive installation art at the Subtitled NYC, explores abstraction applied to the subject matter of the pigeon post and vice versa; thus, I would call Jun’s style “Pigeonic Abstraction.” The pigeon post is a metaphorical antithesis that critiques our preference for immediate gratification in not only communication but also our way of life itself.

 

For thousands of years, the pigeon post was a safer alternative to human messengers, who might be intercepted especially in times of war. The Romans and the Greeks in ancient times used this method, as did the Dutch in the 19th century, who obtained the birds from Baghdad. (Militaries in Europe kept pigeons and falcons as messengers until World War I, which ushered in a new era of radio communications and telephones.)

What is the artist trying to point out in engaging with the visual topic and the history of the pigeon post, which is retrograde, slow, and “inefficient?” What does this reveal about the artist? Have we lost a kind of authenticity in our means of exchanging information, including the facts, the beliefs, the emotions, and the artistic expression?

 

Jun produced the installation as a part of an unofficial residency, during which the artist exchanged feedback with the gallerist and curator, Jaejoon Jang, about their works. The artist also noted that he put himself into a mode of isolation, which becomes a conceptual device that adds additional layers of meaning and clarity to his work, as discussed later.

The solo exhibition is a single, continuous, unified installation covering the pipes, the ceilings, and the surrounding walls. The exhibition is completely immersive, and it is impossible to see any work or portion of the show as a standalone piece in its entirety, due to the limited space. All works in the exhibition utilized drawing with graphite or colored pencil. Putting together the entire exhibition took a great deal of time and labor, which the artist feels is a necessary means of validating his art, as written in his notes.
 

The first piece that is visible the moment the viewer enters through the door is “How to Catch a Unicorn” (2024). It is also the first piece that Jun worked on during the residency at the gallery. What we see is a huge rock formation like a network of caves that blocks the view of a green landscape underneath a blue sky. A white horse is hidden within the green landscape that is visible in between the rocky structures, which reminds the viewer of scholar rocks that are collected within Northeast Asian cultures. As the artist received a sculpture of a horse (or a unicorn) as a gift from a fellow artist and relied on it for strength during difficult times, the four-legged creature became a personal symbol of friendship, support, and endurance.

The rear sides of the works are also detailed drawings that are visible behind the stretcher bars and enveloped with metal wire mesh or netting. We are teleported thematically to the inner perspectives of the pigeons as if we were previously pigeons remembering our past lives.

Next, as the viewer turns the corner, “Tailed Stepped On” (2024) comes into view, leaning upright and sideways on the floor. The subway window, which also resembles a microwave oven, is briefly mentioned in this dark and dystopian visual poetry, marked by the harsh forms and lines that are suggestive of barbed wires, electric cords, and the thin bones of birds. A black form that indicates the nose of a dog can be observed at the upper right (upper left in the installed view) corner of the painting. A cascade of entangled circular forms leads to or away from this nose-like form. What does the piling of unfriendly wires and thin bones of birds in the subway signify? It is open to interpretation.

From this point, right behind the viewer is “Lopsided Flight” (2024) standing tall and upright. Depending on whether the sunlight would be emitted into the exhibition space through the sunroof above, this painting would change entirely in terms of its feel and appearance, from muted and moody to bright and vibrant. Renderings of shards of glass or ice are visible on both the left and the right edges of the drawing. What looks like a vulva, or a human eye, becomes discernible underneath. This is accompanied by some kind of wrinkles of a phallic structure that also reads as a repeating sequence of (“photographic”) shots of a bird’s wing in flight. The flight trajectory is vertical, tracing its origin or site of impact to the vulva-like organic form below. The entire composition suggests immense pain or pleasure, or both, which is enough to break the glass around the organic form at the base.

Then we come to a favorite in the entire exhibition, which is “Tailwind” (2024). This is the pinnacle of Jun’s pigeonic abstraction. The drawing is filled to the brim with marks and smudge marks. The artist adds and subtracts to modulate the form, pattern, texture, and every other detail and information that would go into the composition. A great bird of hope and inspirational energy resides within this piece. Wooden beams of high ceilings that also signify beams of light radiate outwards within the abstract feathery composition. The artist who purposefully led a solitary existence for weeks finally discovers an elegant and powerful voice and the precise work to convey this newfound power.

 

All worthy things require time, effort, suffering, and a great amount of sacrifice. For a pigeon messenger, too, a long-distance flight to deliver a message… or a meaning of great length… takes a great deal of time and energy. The artist chose this theme as the basis for his abstraction because he must have perceived something of himself in common with the pigeons – they are the universal avian symbol of the great metropolises, and he is a New Yorker. The artist began on this line of thought and traced back the history of the pigeon post and its implication for art and communication in today’s world of instant pleasure and attainment. Pigeonic abstraction was no accident but rather the deliberated outcome of a poetic kind of logic or meaning, if there could be such a thing.

Through this installation, Jun develops a new repertoire for his symphonic vision of pigeonic abstraction, where fragments of narrative and memory coalesce into a single abstract vision. Through seclusion, the artist distances himself from the meaningless routine of instant communication and outcome. A great deal of authenticity knits the fabric of this work as well as the rest of the installation. The artist chooses the slow and laborious path to thinking, making, existing, and conversing, to obtain a deeper kind of validity and meaning for his art.