Thaddeus Strode
stairway to somewhere: a soundtrack

4 JUL until 15 AUG 2026
Opening – 3 JUL 2026, 6-9 pm

At Linienstrasse 155, 10115 Berlin 

In stairway to somewhere: a soundtrack, Thaddeus Strode’s 13th solo exhibition with neugerriemschneider, a broad palette of sources from mass media, global philosophies and the conceptualist leanings of his artistic predecessors, to film, illustration and surf culture, assemble to a painted mixtape. Life, death and rebirth, transformation and transcendence pervade his new human-scale canvases, negotiated by a flurry of protagonists and the pointed inscriptions that accompany them. An oversized model ship and symbols of the ephemeral, colored to invoke blue screens of video production, stand as ghostly, interdimensional artifacts, while an amplified guitar, activated by the artist during the opening and by visitors throughout the exhibition, textures the presentation.

Strode’s practice has, since its outset, been deeply rooted in his Californian upbringing and surroundings, reflecting upon them in oncanvas tributes to the region’s iconography and disposition. In his latest works, he draws upon the ever-present musical backdrop of these environments – beachside boomboxes, car radios, boardwalk performers – distorting it through the filter of time and methodologies of reconfiguration. Here, the Dadaist cut-up technique that sees printed text separated and constituted anew, and the principles of musique concrète, in which music develops from manipulated recordings and acoustic feedback, inform the works on view. The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” characterized by John Lennon as an attempt to “paint a picture of a revolution,” its reading subject to a listener’s surroundings and disposition, is crucial to this exploration. Broad fields of intuitively applied color, handwritten linguistic interjections and descriptive outlines in black harmoniously collide with musical selections, creating scenes that, finding origins in familiar realities, manifest in realms unsettled.

stairway to somewhere: a soundtrack comprises a nonhierarchical ensemble of canvases, sculptural objects and sound, each element of which works to inform another in reciprocal motions. Strode’s paintings in the exhibition stand around its perimeter at human heights, setting up eye-to-eye encounters. They invite a sense of disquieting identification, and stand as incongruous full-length mirrors reflecting alternate planes. Visions of alternate timelines, parallel presents and futures skewed by real-world truths, feature a cast of characters of Strode’s creation. Envisioned with comic-book levity, each are realized with the earnestness that runs through the artist’s practice. 

Gone From My Sight (Dimensional Flotilla) (in chroma key television blue) (2026) punctuates his painted works, emerging from the gallery’s wall as if arriving from another universe. Alone in an unseen flotilla, it is at once a spectral savior and mysterious presence. Smaller in scale are Strode’s unsuspecting memorials – crushed cans, transistor radios, seagulls and incense burners, tracing autobiography as indicators of time and impermanence. Strode’s ship and strewn totems are colored entirely in the blue of blue screens: specifically toned backdrops intended to be replaced by digital composites. The coloration that reflects immateriality, existing solely to be erased, while also implying an infinitude of prospects – a surface onto which memories project. In keeping with the artist’s egalitarian treatment of media, stairway to somewhere: a soundtrack features an auditory component lent by a guitar and an amplifier. When left idle, the pair releases a textured electric hum. When engaged, its notes distort and reverberate, echoing and folding in on itself, tinting its surroundings. The exhibition continues to gain form through additional musical accompaniment assembled by the artist. With this eponymous soundtrack, the presentation’s parts merge to cyclical musings on a bygone past and an indeterminate future – a fragmented narrative that looks to a prospective existence beyond.

Thaddeus Strode (b. 1964) has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions including at Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich (2022); me Collectors Room Berlin / Stiftung Olbricht, Berlin (2015); Villa Schöningen, Potsdam (2014); 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna (2013); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (2008); Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2007); ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2007); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2006); Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart (2004); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2003); Kunstverein Heilbronn, Heilbronn (2000); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (1997); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1996); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (1996); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1994); and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (1993). Strode lives and works in Los Angeles.