Devin Troy Strother

Communication is Key: Drawing as a Silent Language

V1 SALON is pleased to present

Communication is Key 
Drawing as a Silent Language 
A solo exhibition by Devin Troy Strother
September 23 – October 10, 2026

Communication has never been limited to words. A gesture can function as its own form of communication: a joke, an insult, a warning, or an inside reference. Slang, images, objects, body language, and even silence carry information. Sometimes what goes unsaid communicates more than what is spoken. For this exhibition, Devin Troy Strother presents a new series of drawings that considers these different forms of communication and the space between seeing, speaking, and understanding.

The works approach drawing as a silent language, a way of communicating thoughts, stories, jokes, memories, observations, and cultural information without depending on words. The drawings do not speak in a literal sense, but they are far from quiet. They gossip. They exist. They exaggerate. They remember. They talk shit. They inspire. They misunderstand. They tell stories.

In this way, looking becomes a kind of listening, and drawing becomes a form of talking without opening your mouth. For Strother, drawing becomes less about illustration and more about transmission: passing information from one person to another without knowing exactly how that information will be received.

Strother's practice has long been concerned with language: how people speak to one another, how language changes depending on who is speaking and who is listening, and how code switching, slang, and vernacular move between communities before becoming part of a larger cultural vocabulary. Black vernacular in particular has historically operated this way, being constantly invented, borrowed, misunderstood, appropriated, repeated, renamed, and eventually absorbed into popular culture.

The drawings approach visual imagery in much the same way. Rather than code-switching through speech, Strother considers what it might mean to code-switch visually. A figure, gesture, hairstyle, piece of clothing, interior, cartoon reference, or seemingly insignificant object can contain information that is immediately legible to one viewer while remaining completely opaque to another. The image itself does not change, but its meaning can shift depending on the viewer.

Like language, these images can be misunderstood, mistranslated, repeated incorrectly, or interpreted differently depending on who is in the room. Strother embraces this instability as part of the work. The distance between what the artist intends, what the image communicates, and what the viewer understands creates its own form of conversation. 

Miscommunication is not necessarily a failure. Sometimes it is where the most interesting communication begins.

Devin Troy Strother (b. 1986) lives in Los Angeles, CA. He received a Bachelor of Fine Art from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 2009. His work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at ArtCenter, Pasadena (2025); The Pit, Los Angeles (2024); Sow and Tailor, Los Angeles (2024); Good Mother Gallery, Los Angeles (2024); Eighteen (2023); Ruttkowski 68 (2022). His works are in the permanent collections of LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the California African American Museum. 

Communication is Key: Drawing as a Silent Language is Devin Troy Strother’s  fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.