Born in 29/11/1965 in the port city of Rio Grande, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. He learned to work with wood and other materials at his father's carpentry shop, manufacturing his own toys and small town cardboard models. He graduated high school with a background in architecture, and his main sources of information during this period were the comics, cinema, tv, music and art.
He has a degree in Sculpture (1987) at Federal University of Santa Maria (RS). Between 1990 and 1993 he has attended workshops with José Rezende, Artur Lescher, Ricardo Basbaum and Milton Machado.
He lived in São Paulo between 1994 and 1996 in order to attend his M.A. in Art at ECA/USP advised by professor Carmela Gross. He becomes represented by Casa Triângulo Gallery (SP) where he has his first solo show in 1995, and then in 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2014. The Artistas da USP collection publishes a critical book about his work in 1997, featuring a text by Tadeu Chiarelli. His work was awarded at the Curitiba, Brasília, Salvador and Florianópolis Art Salons.
Besides important group shows such as Ao Cubo/1996 (Paço das Artes/SP), Panorama da Arte Brasileira/1999 (MAM/SP), II Bienal do Mercosul/1999 (Porto Alegre/RS), he also created site-specific projects at Torreão in Porto Alegre (1998), and at Capela do Morumbi in São Paulo (2000).
He then returns to São Paulo in 2001 to get his PhD in Art at ECA/USP. The 25th Bienal de São Paulo featured an important artwork from the series "Portable Landscapes" - which was the theme of his PhD Thesis, defended in 2005. In 2006 he presents his first cabin/furniture made for urban space, Satolepcosmocave. He takes part in the group show Quase Líquido (2008) at Itaú Cultural in São Paulo with Riorotor, a small rotating architecture piece.
In 2009, he devises Cassinocosmocave, a site-specific cabin/furniture project at Cassino Beach, and Kosmodron, a site-specific urban project in Porto Alegre for Bienal do Mercosul. He developed the sculpture/furniture Toporama, a permanent artwork at Centro Cultural São Paulo’s foyer since 2010. In 2011 he created the small cabin/furniture Cavurba for Paralela V, while also participating for the third time in Bienal do Mercosul by elaborating Replikashelvesysem, a sculpture/furniture for the Reading Room at Casa M.
In the same year, he carries out Multipraça, a set of 3 permanent sculpture/furnitures for the indoor Central Square at SESC Bom Retiro in São Paulo. In 2013 he executes the architecture/furniture Gradiente for the Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa in Lisbon. In 2014 he makes ReplikaFlora, a permanent sculpture/furniture for the Flora Ars + Natura and also Tektoniks/El Bosque Invertido for the exhibition El uso estético del objeto, ArtBO 2014, both in Bogotá/Colombia.
Still in 2014, he created ZonaTotalflex, a site-specific artwork for Arte Serrina at Bragança Paulista, and also Roundeck, a sculpture/furniture for MAC Goiás in Goiânia.
More recently, in 2017, he made Rotorama, a specific intervention for the Octógono at Pinacoteca de São Paulo. In 2018 he released his second book covering 30 years of art making, featuring texts from Tadeu Chiarelli, Agnaldo Farias, José Roca, among others.
Besides his activities as an artist, he is also a Professor of Sculpture at Universidade Federal de Pelotas/RS.
Artists
Artist
Daniel Acosta
Rio Grande, 1965