The exhibition takes its name from A. Barbara Pilon’s seminal 1972 book on concrete poetry, in which she asks, “Have you ever thought of writing a poem using only a letter, a word, distortions of words, nonsense words, or no words at all? Have you ever thought of using the space around words to help the reader understand the idea you are trying to communicate?”

Taking these questions as a cue, Chauhan uses a typewriter to investigate the visual or plastic potential of language. Chauhan’s typewriter drawings use the repetition of single letters to form a sequence of fields. His interest in elementary gestures, led him to work within language in plastic terms, starting from its distinct units.

In the words of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari “Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping…”

Chauhan has exhibited his work at the Saatchi Gallery in London, the UC Davis Museum, the Grimm Museum in Berlin, White Columns NY, the SONS Museum in Kruishoutem, Belgium, the Berkeley Art Museum, the DeYoung Museum, The Asian Art Museum, the Jack Hanley Gallery, New York & San Francisco, Annarumma Gallery in Naples, Italy, SVIT in Prague, Czech Republic, the Apartment in Vancouver, BC and others.