source: saatchionline

Alex Diamond was born and raised in New York City. He currently divides his time between New York City and Austin, Texas.

Location
New York, NY, United States

Education

University of Texas at Austin
Brooklyn Technical High School
Simon Baruch M.S. 104
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source: vimeo

Alex Diamond is an artist project conceived by Jörg Heikhaus & heliumcowboy in 2004.

Jörg has been working and exhibiting as an artist since the 90ies, before embarking on different careers in various industries and professions: Jörg has been a photographer, a designer, a newspaper editor, writer of short stories and fiction, founder and creative director of the design agency killakanu, CEO of Internet consultancy Icon Medialab Germany and a freelance business consultant for companies such as Brand Eins, Volkswagen or Universal Music.
Since art was the first true love in his life, opening the art gallery heliumcowboy in 2003 marked the consolidation of his professional experiences, his curiosity and passion.

However, in 2004, Jörg returned to creating his own art with the first exhibition, ,Alex Diamond‘s Strange Sofa‘. In the beginning, this was only a sideline project outside of the gallery, something to „keep my head clear, my hands busy and to stay sane“ (in his own words), not intended to becoming a full time vocation and most definitely not a represented artist of his own gallery.

Slipping into different characters for each exhibition, in 2006 the person creating the artwork (Jörg) was deliberately taken away for an experimental and conceptual journey into celebrity culture. Raising the question wether an artist can be established without a face and vita, Jörg launched a long-term (2007-2010) project: ,Being Alex Diamond“. The result was exhibited in Miami, New York, Barcelona and Hamburg, and finally covered in a book published by Gudberg Verlag, Hamburg (October 2009).

After closing this project with the book and a few shows (and yes, you can establish an artist without ever revealing his/her identity, it is just very complex and requires a lot of additional work), Jörg returned to officially being the originator and creator of Alex Diamond. This is the second phase in „the life of Diamond“, when the work itself moved more in the focus, „not being tied up and busy with covering up the traces all the time“. Jörg moved his studio into a part of his new gallery space for heliumcowboy in 2010 and founded ,The Alex Diamond Mining Company‘, a fictional corporation as basis for all his artistic endeavors.

The work created here develops iteratively in a process that is strongly influenced by tradition and craftsmanship, „in values as well as in tools used“. This can be seen in the works themselves, in the way they are realized, in room concepts and the alteration of spaces, collected materials, multiples, and editions.

Works on and with wood; paintings with acrylics or spray cans as base for complex wood cuts; photographs, which are painted and drawn over; vintage block printing; furniture, installations, and complete rooms entirely out of wood – the extensive and technically wide opus made him into an acclaimed artists of this generation. Alex Diamond exhibited widely in Germany as well as in the USA, Spain and Switzerland.