Pigeon

In her site-specific installation Pigeon, Christina Gundersen explores notions of power, control, and loss, which were first initiated in her ongoing series of black-and-white paintings, Fallen. With Pigeon, Gundersen creates an elegant and uneasy environment that challenges our conventional relationship to photography and space. Gundersen situates an antique pigeon coop atop a pedestal in the middle of the gallery, and scatters a series of glass plates, overlaying shadowy photographs of pigeons, around the coop and across the gallery floor. The photographic installation takes on a sculptural presence: viewers must navigate the space, moving in and around the glass plates in order to see the pigeons, which are only represented by their shadows—an ambiguous yet portentous sign. These ubiquitous birds are conspicuously absent; their shadows, captured and encased in glass, are now permanent reminders of their presence. By placing the photographs on the floor rather than on the walls, Gundersen physically shifts our conventional relationship to the subjects of her work and the object nature of her photographs, creating a new, unresolved narrative in the process.