Booth concept SCOPE New York, 2008:

Alex Diamond: You don’t know what love is
Installation and solo presentation at SCOPE art fair, Booth 20

Some first shots from the rough wood construction for the new piece.Finished piece below.

After three solo shows at the heliumcowboy artspace in Hamburg since 2004, group representation at the fairs in Cologne, Miami, Basel and New York since 2006, and numerous joint projects and group shows, this year our whole booth at the SCOPE art fair New York will be reserved for Alex Diamond.

Diamond will build a walk-in installation called „You don’t know what love is“, which will be the central piece in the booth. Around it, several of his latest works from his last show „Love Me With A Gun To My Head“ (Hamburg, Dec 07/Jan 08) will be shown as well, plus as a brand new, large format painting/collage, that has gotten ready the day before shipping for the fair was picked up in Hamburg ...

image from a similar, but more open installation alled „Tan Cierto Como Hay Dios“, Diamond has built for his latest show at our gallery

The installation measures 5 x 5 x 9.5 feet (width x depth x height). It encloses a small, plush and cozy prayer or confessional room, which is less than 6.5 feet high. Inside, standing on barkmulch, which also surrounds the installation outside, you find a shrine, filled with floating souls and spirits - good and evil. The only lightsource comes from the small openings in the shrine, through which you can see the spirits. It is a comment on authority, love and unfullfilled desires, combining elements of nature, craft, religion, urban art and common beliefs. A shrewd statement in itself - but also a hiding place. You want to be inside, you really do, and forget about everything happening outside of the box. It is a play with emotions, and people walking inside will feel the solitude and warmth of the near-claustrophobic space. It admits only one at a time. Like in a confessional, you are alone. But while in church there is somebody listening and trying to give advice (something the artist questions), here you are on your own. Help yourself. Heal yourself. But fight your fears alone.

Being a very personal, intimate piece, Diamond finds the busy, noisy and hectic art fair the ideal place for the installation.

While the basic structure and all the woodwork has been prepared before in Hamburg and has been shipped to New York, all other work (the inside room, the painting of the outside walls, the area around the box) will be completed on location.

Alex Diamond: "Monopoly Remix - Myth Of The White Buffalo", 180 x 190 cm, acryllic, ink, magazine pages/collage on 16 wood panels (2008).

About Alex Diamond

Alex Diamond has been around for a while, staging incredible shows that also always celebrate the incarnation of the artist in various characters, shapes or even gender. Diamond appears at these shows in different roles, and underlining this artistic approach he does not reveal his background or vita, which would be an invention anyway.

The difficulties to describe who or what Alex Diamond is already start with the missing vita: Unseizable as a person and difficult to categorize as an artist, Alex Diamond is more phantasy than reality. His main issue always centers around his work and its presentation, but never around the personality of an individual. Alex Diamond appears always as a new and different creation of a role or character with every one of his mostly monothematic and staged shows. Not limited by a CV, a formative education or even a dedicated technique or style, Alex Diamond constantly develops a new specific presence for the „Artist behind the work“.

As much as this is unusal, it offers huge freedom other artists may not have. Diamond (or whatever Diamond choses to be) can tell a completely new and different story using different means or perspectives every time he opens up his studio to release new work. He is a storyteller, a seducer, a catalyst. It is not about the person or the importance of personality todays artists often get, it is about the changeabilty and flexibilty of the incarnation of the artist as part of his current project.

This play with phantasies, with different roles and themes within one artist, can be seen as related to musicians or, even better, with superheroes (or even porn actors). With the difference that - in contrast to e.g. Bono Vox/Paul Hewson or Spider-Man/Peter Parker, behind whom always exists a real person with a vita and name - Alex Diamond really has no other identity.

Despite all this, Alex Diamond is an artist in the traditional way, who is gaining more and more attention on the art market. This is due to the fact that the interchangeablilty of his character doesn’t contradict the curational aspects of developing a sustainable body of work. It’s rather the opposite: as an artist Diamond works extremely focused on the development of a lasting and unique work, which maybe can only be defined by the name: Alex Diamond is Alex Diamond is .... His distinctive approach to making his art is defined by creating quality, value and relevance within his complete work as an artist.

However, the changes between characters and styles are not hard (or harsh) turns, but more a smooth development process, so that it becomes more and more possible over the years to identify a clear originator behind everything Alex Diamond produces. No uncontrollable jumps between styles, rather an extension or narrative translation of an artistic vision.

Alex Diamond is an artist who apparently lives solely through the art he creates - and vice versa. He plays mind tricks with visual aids, pleasing at one moment, disturbing in the next. Independent from styles and techniques, he mirrors life and our constant fight for possession, superiority, survival and love in an almost nonchalant way.

>>> Alex Diamond: New York Diaries (Alex' blog about our time in New York at the fair)

>>> press release about our activities in New York (pdf, english)