Dan Coopey’s work traces how weaving lies at the heart of the modern world: the bedrock for architecture; foreshadowing ceramics; a founding object for measurement, a unit to pay taxes; an object of capitalism and commerce. Often undulating and amorphous, his sculptures burlesque the basket as vessel, playing with a prototype form provided by nature and adopted by postindustrial society. Other works, through the act of folding and wrapping, continue this invocation of the receptacle, with the artist interested in the evolution of packaging from woven material to cardboard and plastic; each sculpture evoking the earliest of human histories as well as foregrounding the relevance of hand production to the world we live in right now.
Each of the artist’s sculptures will often take months to complete, during which time the weave becomes an extension of the artist’s body, each haptic twist and turn in the finished sculpture reflecting the back-and-forth of production, all the forms ultimately returning to the figure of the maker; the textiles akin to skin, the body becoming part of the environment it inhabits. The artist never premeditates an end design; rather, the works emerge organically out of an intimate and intuitive process. Anni Albers wrote about giving the object a chance to design itself, and Coopey thinks of his sculptures similarly: they make themselves.
Coopey was born 1981 in Stroud, UK, the centre of the country’s ancient weaving industry, his family working in the local wool mills. He moved to Brazil in 2019 and now lives and works in Minas Gerais. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (2004), and has participated in several notable artist residencies, including Organizmo (Bogotá, 2023), Fibra (Bogotá, 2018), Pivô (São Paulo, 2017) and Acme Fire Station (London, 2012–2015). Recent solo exhibitions include: Satellites, Corvi-Mora (London, 2025); The Double, Central Galeria (São Paulo, 2023); Brunches at Wonderwerk, Espaço C.A.M.A (São Paulo, 2021); Sunday, Galeria Estação (São Paulo, 2019); Dry, Kubikgallery (Porto, 2017); and lalahalaha, Belmacz (London, 2015). He has also participated in group exhibitions such as: Fartura, Luisa Strina (São Paulo, 2025); Olha bem as montanhas, Quadra (São Paulo, 2024); The Immortal, Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery (London, 2022); Beuys Open Source, Belmacz (London, 2021); Mingei Now, Sokyo Gallery (Kyoto, 2019); The Peaceful Dome, The Bluecoat (Liverpool, 2017); and Neither, Mendes Wood DM (Brussels, 2017).