Ajit Chauhan: Peephole
Opens Saturday, February 21, 2026. 1-6 pm
The initial use of the peephole began with the idea of the threshold. I have always been drawn to liminal spaces—the interval between one state and another. The peephole became a device for thinking through that space: positioned between self and other, inside and outside, subject and world.
Consider two competing models of the self. On one hand, the Cartesian notion of a fully formed, stable subject moving outward into the world. On the other, a Deleuzian understanding of the self as continually shaped by external forces—porous, relational, in flux. The peephole sits at that tension point. A barrier that is also an opening.
Tangentially, the work also extends into a broader fascination with perception—more specifically the limits of human perception. I do not believe the world is limited to what my senses can register. Our experience of reality is biologically constrained. What we call visible light is only a minute fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. But beyond that narrow range lies an immensity we cannot access.
Radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet, infrared—these pass through us continuously, unnoticed. The information is there, but we lack the apparatus to perceive it. A dog hears frequencies beyond our range. Honeybees perceive ultraviolet patterns. Rattlesnakes register infrared heat. Medical imaging devices detect X-rays; car dashboards receive radio frequencies. It is all the same electromagnetic “stuff,” yet reality differs depending on the sensor.
The peephole, then, becomes more than a metaphor; it becomes a model of perception itself: a reminder that every view is partial, conditioned, and constructed. What we take to be the world is only the narrow band we are equipped to sense. The threshold is not just architectural or philosophical—it is biological. And we are always standing within it.
Ajit Chauhan lives in the coastal community of Salmon Creek, California. His work has been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London, White Columns NY, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, Asian Art Museum, UC Davis Museum, KMAC Museum, the Grimm Museum in Berlin, the SONS Museum in Kruishoutem, Belgium, Jack Hanley Gallery, Annarumma Gallery, SVIT Praha, Anglim/Trimble, and recently at Galerie Stadtpark Krems.
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