Short vertical stripes alternate between bright pink and radiant violet with various shades of green, forming an elongated horizontal band. The set pieces in Katharina Stadler's large-format work Play 2014 appear to be excerpts from an unusually colored rainbow or a colorful barcode. Each color field is individually applied to the fabric by the painter, there are overlaps and small gaps that make it clear to the viewer that they were created by human hands, that this is not about clean, straight lines. Katharina Stadler layers several of these striped fabric bands on top of each other and joins them with crooked, sometimes downright curvy seams; a physical act that highlights the object character of the so-called image carrier. The offset sewn color areas form an idiosyncratic pattern that seems to waver slightly, reminiscent of camera shake—pink and purple paths that jump back and forth in the green. One almost feels caught when one notices that the own brain is constantly searching for supposed perfection. It seems comforting that there is a textile frame with which the artist sews her color fields, seeming to tame them in a sensitive way, creating a balance between order and irritation.

With her title Thinking about Feeling, Katharina Stadler refers to the often seemingly self-evident duality of what are probably the two most complex and challenging human abilities to understand: thinking and feeling, head and gut. Supposedly, feeling stands for the chaotic and unpredictable, while thinking is usually associated with the opposite. But is that really true?

To visualize her experiences, memories, and reflections, the artist finds her means of expression in colors, silhouettes, and, more recently, in gestural strokes—form follows feeling. The boundaries between the subconsciously created and the intentionally directed seem to blur. Feelings and thoughts, it seems, manifest themselves and form a common, dynamic whole. Areas of color and brushstrokes intertwine, interpenetrate, and overlap, ending in one part of the picture only to begin again in a different way in the next or the one after that. The intuitive dance of colors extends across large areas of the picture in works such as Poor Pigeon or Watching the Sky Fall Apart. The frame, however, remains, enveloping the lively, often multi-part interior like a taming and protective layer of skin.

Without knowing the actual background, viewers gain a sense of the moods, emotional charges, and intellectual impulses reflected in the images through the coloring and brushwork of the abstractly painted pieces of fabric. Sometimes more, sometimes less, shades, contrasts, and surfaces create an image space with a specific depth that invites contemplation. With their symbolic potential, the works encourage a reflection on boundaries and finiteness. Again and again, one can start this anew without having to discard what has already been recognized.

Katharina Stadler was born in Oberhausen in 1995 and lives in Düsseldorf. She began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 2014, first studying fine art under Prof. Andreas Gursky, then painting under Prof. Thomas Scheibitz. In 2021, she graduated as a master student of Prof. Thomas Scheibitz. Katharina Stadler was represented in the curated exhibition Academy POSITIONS at the POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair in 2020. Along with four other members of Prof. Thomas Scheibitz's class, her work was shown in the group exhibition Accurate Glitch in 2022 and in the solo exhibition HAPPY-GO-LUCKY at Jarmuschek + Partner as well as at salondergegenwart in Hamburg in 2023. In 2025, the Ars Sacrow art association presented her works in the highly acclaimed exhibition Gegen den Strich–Die Generation Z in der Kunst (Against the Grain–Gen Z in the Arts, curated by Michael Thoss and Dr Dietmar Peikert).