Jeremias Altmann

Jeremias Altmann, born in 1989, studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Lives and works in Vienna. His artistic work focuses intensively on the themes of machines, industrialization, people, and development.

He repeatedly embarks on “adventure expeditions” to abandoned industrial ruins across Europe. There, he takes in the atmosphere with all his senses and traces the history of the place—allowing himself to bring small and sometimes larger finds to safety and turn them into powerful sculptures.

Like the “Connector l” exhibited at our gallery. In this sculpture, Altmann combines a textile matrix punch from the Waldviertel region, a voltage regulator from a Czech copper mine, components from a Belgian steel mill, an Italian film projector, and a spool wheel from France to create a new, albeit similarly decommissioned, apparatus. In this way, he creates “a rusty poem with many languages” that tells of industrialization that promoted economic growth, engineering and worker pride—and equally illusory hopes of creating unstoppable progress and universal happiness.