Notebooks from the end of the world

By Jeremias Rumpl

My work has been concerned with man made disasters, like wars, for a while now. Recently, however, my focus has been shifting more towards environmental issues and our relationship with nature and the implications of these things on a personal and more general level. A few years ago I started working with metal, mostly zinc, that I etch into and solder together, to make these sort of sculptures. What I do is still very much rooted in drawing, and that translates into the metal work as well. I tend to not think too much about what I am doing when I am drawing, for me it’s more of a process driven thing, playing around with various things and seeing where that leads me. In that sense, I am more interested in the poetry of these things, and how they feel, rather than communicating something clearly or explicitly, even though I do have themes and ideas I am interested in, I think a lot can be explored and found out just by letting things happen and doing what feels right, rather than thinking everything through. These drawings would sometimes be taken as a basis for my metal works, by etching them into plates and finding different ways to deal and play around with them. It’s a way for me to get these drawings, that have been accumulating over the past few years, out of their little books, which I would rather not tear apart.

Jeremias Rumpl was born 1992 in Steiermark, Österreich. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2026. His work mainly deals with themes of man-made disasters, and our relationship to nature. Rooted in drawing, his recent works use materials like zinc plates that are etched, into soldered together and left exposed to the elements.