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  "description": "Daniel Ferstl sews, inks, and assembles. Vienna-based. A Catapult Artist in Focus on comfort and dread as materials of the same practice.",
  "path": "/daniel-ferstl-artist-in-focus-catapult-contemporary/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-07T03:51:29.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.catapult-platform.art",
  "tags": [
    "@daniel_ferstl",
    "Ateliers Vauban in Besançon",
    "LaBibi Gallery in Mallorca",
    "Instagram Daniel Ferstl",
    "Artist in Focus",
    "Read More",
    "Featured"
  ],
  "textContent": "## Daniel Ferstl - Artist in Focus\n\nThe canvases don't begin with paint. Ferstl sources fabric first, wool check, terry cloth, satin, printed cotton, then sews padded forms directly onto it, building the image from accumulated textile decisions rather than mark-making.\n\n****Daniel Ferstl**** at work in his Vienna studio. Courtesy the Artist.\n\nThe result sits somewhere between a wall-mounted quilt and a soft-relief sculpture, and reads the way most vernacular objects do: immediately recognizable, slightly uncanny at sustained attention.\n\n* * *\n\n**Daniel Ferstl**\n\n**Born:**\nLinz, Austria\n\n**Based in:**\nVienna, Austria\n\n**Medium:**\nMixed media, textile, ink drawing, canvas\n\n**Education:**\nUniversität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Malerei / Animationsfilm / Tapisserie, Prof. Christian Ludwig Attersee, 2003–2008\n\n**Recent Exhibitions:**\n_Backseat Dreamer_ , Proyecto Reme, Palma, 2025\n _For you !Kneedeepinthehoopla_ , Wonnerth Dejaco, Vienna, 2024\n _Über das Neue_ , Belvedere 21, Vienna, 2023\n\n**Collections:**\nCollection of the State of Austria; Collection of the City of Vienna; Collection Famille Servais, Brussels\n\n**Instagram:**\n@daniel_ferstl\n\n**Image Courtesy:**\nCourtesy the Artist\n\n* * *\n\nThe forms he attaches are borrowed from a particular bandwidth of popular culture, horror film characters, cartoon dogs, consumer brand logos, meme imagery, rendered in foam, fleece, and upholstery padding, then sewn to backgrounds of improbably tasteful domestic fabric.\n\n****Daniel Ferstl**** ,  __Armageddon__ , fleece/loden/cotton/upholstery foam/yarn/12v motor/linen/wood, 160×125 cm, 2024. Courtesy the Artist.\n\n****Daniel Ferstl,**** __Penanggalan__ , fleece/sequins/satin/cotton/yarn/upholstery foam/canvas/wood, 160×125 cm, 2024. Courtesy the Artist.\n\nThis is not pastiche, and it is not critique by ironic distance. The works ask something more uncomfortable: whether comfort and dread might not be different registers at all, but the same register at different volumes.\n\n* * *\n\n> **\"Who's in control? Me? My subconscious mind? Isn't that the same? Am I my own back seat dreamer?\" - Daniel Ferstl**\n\n* * *\n\nAcross the large-format works, the argument holds a specific tension, Posh Doggo Skeleton (2024) carries it most plainly, a skeleton in a plaid skirt, sewn in fleece and leatherette, arm raised mid-pose, shoes intact.\n\n****Daniel Ferstl**** ,  __Grunge Flowers__ , mixed media, 160×125 cm, 2026. Courtesy the Artist.****Daniel Ferstl,**** __Existenz:Ragdoll__ , mixed media, 65×55 cm, 2025. Courtesy the Artist.****Daniel Ferstl Artist in Focus: Artwork:****__Sometimes it's hard to love yourself__ , mixed media, 121×95 cm, 2026. Courtesy the Artist. ****Daniel Ferstl,**** __A Nice Shirt__ , ink/woolcloth/vinyl foil/wool/felt/yarn/canvas/wood, 65×51 cm, 2026. Courtesy the Artist.****Daniel Ferstl,**** __Start tracking your macros – they need you for war__ (detail), mixed media/canvas, 160×125 cm, 2026. Courtesy the Artist.\n\nThe figure has the bearing of a socialite and the anatomy of a Halloween decoration, set against grey felt, it holds the line between horror iconography and domestic softness without resolving it, which is the point. The surface is genuinely appealing; that is not a contradiction but the condition.\n\nSometimes I struggle to love myself (2026) works in a different key. A padded grey creature, vaguely dinosaurian, carries two foam emoji faces on a steel chain, one sad, one happy, both dangling, against a diamond-pattern velvet background in amber and brown.\n\nThe title arrives without irony, which is what makes it land. Ferstl's work often does this, takes the language of casual self-disclosure and gives it physical weight, stitches it down, frames it.\n\nStudio view, Daniel Ferstl, Vienna. Courtesy the Artist.Studio view, Daniel Ferstl, Vienna. Courtesy the Artist.****Matteo**** in the studio. Ferstl sources fabric from Textil Müller, Vienna. Courtesy the Artist.\n\nThe most recent canvases pull back from spectacle.\n\nA series of small works from 2025–2026 embeds ink drawings of his cat, **Matteo** , who appears repeatedly, into textile canvases constructed like shirts, with working buttons, wool birds perched at the edge, terry cloth borders. They are more intimate, less armored by humor; they don't ask whether comfort is a trap, they seem to have accepted it as the medium and keep working inside it.\n\nFerstl studied painting, animation, and tapisserie at the Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien under Christian Ludwig Attersee, completing his studies in 2008. The tapisserie training matters, textile construction here is not a conceptual pivot away from painting but a continuation of a material lineage.\n\nExhibition view:  __Lovers__ , ****Daniel Ferstl,**** 2022. Courtesy the Artist.Exhibition view:  __For you !Kneedeepinthehoopla__ , ****Daniel Ferstl,**** 2024. Courtesy the Artist.\n\nHe was a founding member of the artist-run space MAUVE (2012–2016), a significant node in Vienna's scene at the time. His work has entered the collection of the State of Austria and the City of Vienna, and was included in the 2023 Belvedere 21 group show Über das Neue.\n\nThis summer he has a solo show at Ateliers Vauban in Besançon, France in August, followed by a residency at LaBibi Gallery in Mallorca in September\n\n\nInstagram Daniel Ferstl\n\n****Daniel Ferstl**** in his Vienna studio. Courtesy the Artist.\n\n* * *\n\nArtist in Focus\n\n## Julia Zöhrer: Textile Images Between Myth and Presence\n\nRead More\n\nArtist in Focus\n\n## Bérénice Gaça Courtin: Weaving as Encrypted Memory\n\nRead More\n\nFeatured\n\n## Filzmäuse: The Collective That Turns Soft Materials Into Hard Truths\n\nRead More",
  "title": "Something is Soft in the Horror Section",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-07T03:51:28.683Z"
}