Zeichnungen für Kinder
und Erwachsene (2011–2020)

Drawings for Children and Adults

Viewed at close range, the seven large-scale drawings in this series disclose a painstaking topography of hand-drawn circles. Each circle is laid down in a single, uninterrupted stroke using notary-grade document ink—selected for its archival stability and exceptional lightfastness. The uniformity of the line depends entirely on the artist’s steady, continuous tempo: any hesitation or interruption would pool the ink or thicken the stroke, betraying the precision of the form. While the shifting diameters of the circles calibrate the overall tonal range, their interiors are systematically filled with deliberate horizontal hatching.

Rather than pursuing the seamless neutrality sought in commercial offset printing, Stattler’s method foregrounds the registration gaps and slight overlaps that accrue between hand-drawn lines. In a mechanical process, these would be dismissed as defects; here, they become the work’s operative language. The resulting micro-frictions generate an optical shimmer—an insistent flicker that strains the eye and produces a controlled unease. This discomfort is not incidental; it functions as a conceptual barrier, subverting the smooth, voyeuristic consumption associated with the images’ photographic origin.

The drawings are graphic readaptations of double-page photographs from a sex education manual first published in 1974. The dark vertical bands that bisect the compositions reveal themselves as the shadows cast by the book’s gutter—the physical crease of the original spread. As an object of cultural history, the publication carries an ambivalent legacy that was and remains a subject of intense debate. It has been cited as a pivotal contribution to progressive sexual pedagogy—a lineage with which many still identify. Yet, it also contains a deliberate and fatal idealization of childhood sexuality that, from today’s standpoint, demands clear critical rejection within contemporary discourse on sexual violence against children.

The series derives its particular force—and its irony—from a reversal of the 1970s demand for total visibility. Where that era’s discourse often equated liberation with explicitness, Stattler translates this material into drawings that steadfastly resist the gaze. Through an intentionally coarse matrix, the motifs first appear indistinct, almost out of focus. The conceptual ›tilt‹ is activated by the viewer’s own movement: as one steps closer—yielding to a voyeuristic impulse to see more—the representational image collapses. What seemed legible at a distance dissolves into an impenetrable field of infinite dots, refusing to deliver the detail the observer seeks. In this way, the work converts proximity into obstruction and turns looking itself into a problem—ethical as much as optical.

Technical Specifications

Medium: 7 drawings, Document ink on paper

Dimensions: 222 x 142 cm (87.4 x 55.9 in) each

Publication Notice: For print or online publication, reproductions must be limited to detail views in order to preserve the integrity of the optical effect.

Installation & Viewing Conditions: The work must be installed so that no visitor is positioned more than 5 meters (approx. 16.5 ft) from it at any time. This condition is essential to the work’s conceptual function: beyond this distance, the individual marks visually fuse into a continuous grayscale image, inadvertently reinstating the photographic clarity the artist deliberately withholds.