Alex Diamond – "Good Job."
We celebrate the book release as an event in our gallery! The new fantastic artbook by Alex Diamond in a limited edition of 250 with drawings on paper, using fountain pens and permanent ink, alternating between the colors black and mountain blue. On more than 500 pages.
"These drawings represent what comes to my mind: little statements, both drawn and written. Words are important, and all these drawings reflect on our society and the messed-up issues we are confronted with. While not all of them are politically infused, many are very poetic, romantic, melancholic, and smooth, like a 1950s Miles Davis composition. However, most are edgy and often uncomfortable, reminiscent of Mingus or Coleman. When they go off the rails, the soundtrack shifts to Mr. Bungle, Mike Patton, Tomahawk, the Melvins, or much of John Zorn‘s work. Because you know, in my opinion, a good drawing should always strive to be like a great song."
(Alex Diamond, October 2024)
About the artist
FOLLOW HIMAlex Diamond
“Alex Diamond” was created by the artist Jörg Heikhaus as a conceptual and experimental art project in 2004. Al-though the project itself was completed with the release of the book „Don’t Worry ‚Bout a Thing: Being Alex Diamond“ and the accompanying exhibitions in Hamburg (2009) and Barcelona (2010) many years ago, Alex Diamond has come to be established as his artist’s name.
After the conclusion of „Being Alex Diamond,“ Jörg left straightforward painting and traditional photography behind and developed new techniques, using wood as his main material and blending carving, sculpture, and painting. His meticulously worked and highly detailed woodcuts, often layered into wall sculptures and blended with various painting and coloring techniques, have since become the unique trademark of Alex Diamond’s art.
As a conceptual and content-driven artist, he primarily sees himself as a storyteller. The center of his work is the analysis and interpretation of contemporary culture and its recurring distinctive patterns. His artistic focus is the study of the social and cultural aspects of human coexistence.
A political and social unease can always be felt in the work of Alex Diamond. As an artist, he sees it as his responsibility to express his views on the pressing issues of our time—by his own means. A great anger can be felt, but also hope and encouragement to change. However, this depth of substance is not in the aesthetic and thus visible foreground of his work. It rather unfolds like a good song by engaging with melody and rhythm, harmony and disharmony, text and voice.
Jörg has been an artist since 1987. He has exhibited worldwide at international art fairs in Basel, New York, Miami, Copenhagen, Barcelona, and Berlin, and prestigious galleries such as Jonathan LeVine (NY), Iguapop (Barcelona), Forster (London), Galerie Wolfsen (Aalborg, DK), Die Kunstagentin (Cologne), Mortal Machine Gallery (NOLA), Feinkunst Krüger, and Affenfaust (both Hamburg), to name a few. He founded the internationally acclaimed heliumcowboy gallery in 2002 inside his artist studio as a unique place to show and experience art, which he passed on to his eldest son Melvin in 2020.
Today, Jörg spends his time creating his impressive woodwork, energetic paint-ings, and subtle fountain pen drawings in one of his studios—one in Hamburg that is attached to the gallery building and that he built from vintage wood, or the one in his old farmhouse in the remote countryside, way up in the solitude of Northern Germany.