Katharina Stadler Germany, b. 1995

Katharina Stadler is an emerging German painter whose work interrogates the physical and conceptual boundaries of painting through textile-based construction. Born in 1995 in Oberhausen, she lives and works in Düsseldorf, where her practice developed in close dialogue with the material traditions and critical frameworks of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Stadler's paintings are composed through a process of fragmentation and assembly. Canvas surfaces are cut into segments, combined with painted textile elements, and rejoined through visible seams and stitching. These operations foreground the work's material logic and emphasize painting as an object rather than an image. The surface becomes a constructed field in which painterly gestures, chromatic decisions, and structural interventions coexist. By allowing seams and joins to remain exposed, Stadler resists the conventions of seamless composition and instead frames painting as an accumulative, temporal process.

Her approach to abstraction is neither gestural nor purely formal. Color is deployed with restraint, often muted or softened, while material contrasts introduce subtle tensions between cohesion and disjunction. The textile elements carry associations of intimacy, repair, and domestic labor, yet they are mobilized without narrative illustration. In this sense, Stadler's work operates within a psychological register, suggesting interior states through material decisions rather than representation.

Stadler studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, initially in the class of Andreas Gursky and later with Thomas Scheibitz, whose engagement with painterly construction and image logic informed her understanding of composition. She completed her studies as Meisterschülerin in 2021. This academic trajectory situates her within a broader Düsseldorf lineage, while her material focus distinguishes her practice from image-based or purely optical approaches associated with the region.

In 2025, Stadler presented her first solo exhibition, Thinking about Feeling, at Jarmuschek + Partner in Berlin, marking a significant step in the public articulation of her practice. She has also participated in group exhibitions and art fair presentations, including Academy POSITIONS at the POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair. Her work is increasingly recognized within a younger generation of European painters who engage abstraction through process, tactility, and material specificity.

Stadler's recent works continue to refine the relationship between painted surface and textile intervention, exploring how construction itself can function as a form of thought. Her practice contributes to contemporary discussions around abstraction by reasserting the physical conditions of painting and by framing material decisions as carriers of conceptual and emotional resonance.