Back Seat Dreamer
“Every once in a while I dream of driving a car but I’m confined to the backseat. I try to reach the steering wheel and pedals, but to no avail. I haven’t driven a car for over twenty years and it shows. I wake up and switch on my computer. In live streaming a back seat gamer is someone who keeps interrupting the player, the one who’s at the controls, by giving hints or telling them what to do. I feel similarly about myself. Who’s in control? Me? My subconscious mind? Isn’t that the same? Am I my own back seat dreamer?”
– Daniel Ferstl
Back Seat Dreamer unfolds an ambiguous universe where conscious desires intertwine with subconscious forces: a space of conflicting signals that drive us to act while also casting us as spectators of our own lives. Through the allegory of the “back seat driver,” Ferstl explores the desire to steer the course without having full control, an enduring wrestle with autonomy that runs through his work.
His silky pieces speak of luxury and status, yet reveal layers of self-doubt and unease. The unexpected appearance of a moth on the most delicate fabric hints at what might be lurking beneath it all. The installation places viewers in ambivalent terrain: between seduction and discomfort, control and surrender. References flow freely, from cult cinema to gaming aesthetics, from decorative motifs to flamboyant gestures, blurring distinctions between high and low, classical and kitsch. The result is a stage where attraction and doubt coexist, and where every surface harbors
The exhibition invites visitors to inhabit these thresholds and explore a kind of freedom that always emerges with its own light and shadow.
About the Artist
Daniel Ferstl (Austria, 1982) lives and works in Vienna. He studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Christian Ludwig Attersee. His work has been exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien, Belvedere, Belvedere 21, Belmacz Gallery (London), Austrian Cultural Forum (London), and L21 (Palma de Mallorca).