Matija Čop (b. 1987, Croatia) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, and graphic arts. Through modular structures and material experimentation, his practice explores themes of identity, transformation, and belonging. In addition to collaborations with cultural figures including Lady Gaga, Čop's work is held in major public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb.
In 'You Know How To Calm Me Down' (2022), Matija Čop explores the relationship between sound, memory, the body, and matter through a sculpture that transforms an intimate experience into a three-dimensional form. The work originates from the translation of a personal sound recording into a soft, vertical structure composed of sculptural modules that visually evoke the movement of a sound wave.
To give form to his soft sculptures, Čop has developed his own interlocking technique. The elements composing each sculpture are neither glued nor stitched together, but held in place solely through a complex process of manual interlocking.
The individual ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) modules support one another through a system of intersections that allows them to fit together with precision, without force or constraint. The structure emerges from the balance between its parts, transforming the act of construction into a metaphor for the relationship itself: a bond that neither imposes nor restrains, but finds its stability through mutual correspondence.
The intersection thus becomes a symbol of the union between the artist and his partner, a connection in which two individual identities remain distinct while sustaining one another. Totemic yet lightweight, Čop's sculptures render tangible that which, by its very nature, is ephemeral, translating sound and intimacy into form.
