about tentacles | by alex diamond

Looking back at my work, tentacles have developed into a very important element within it. Like the flowing shapes, which I started with very early on and which still appear from time to time, they have a life of their own, crawling and spreading in an almost organic manner over the surface I am working on (regardless of the kind of surface). Since 2005, when they first appeared in small parts of the series “Gold, Kinder!”, they have not only become longer and more mobile, but also multiplied enormously. Since 2006, they appear in most of my artworks. So what’s it all about then ... I wish I knew exactly. I would love to say that they just developed a life on their own, but in fact they are far too important for this. Sprawling into the empty room, sometimes trying to get hold of something, sometimes wrapping around other creatures, bodies or elements in the work, they are like the tentacles of jellyfish. Dangerous and beautiful at the same time, a vital means of protection and appropriation of space. They search and discover. They search and feed. They search and create. They search and destroy - which brings me back to Punk as an important heritage of our generation and the main power source behind Alex Diamond’s energy (“Search & Destroy”, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, 1973).  An anecdote dating back to 2006 could help explain why since then the power of tentacles has even increased tenfold in my work. On the beaches of Florida I had an encounter with a Portuguese Man o’ War, a really nasty jellyfish-like creature (they are, in fact, not really jellyfish). It was a painful experience: an extremely long, burning tentacle was wrapped around my leg and because I couldn’t get it off in the water I had to drag that animal through the surf out onto the beach while it was still attached to me. Due to my tentacle obsession, I immediately started to research this creature:  Its name derives from a type of Portuguese War Ship from the 15th and 16th century. It floats on the surface of the ocean. Its tentacles reach deep down into the water, some growing to 50 meters long. The most startling fact: the Portuguese Man O' War is not a single animal. It is a colony of four individuals, each of them highly specialized. They are physically attached to each other and integrated, but technically each of them is an individual animal. Because they take over different functions, they depend on each other to survive. So … if that marine invertebrate consists of four individuals, then how many different creatures fit into the experimental personality that is Alex Diamond? I can’t say I am grateful to that beast that stung me, but it certainly seemed to be a very important encounter in my career.

detail from "the hero of tomorrow rises in the golden child and cries: for the love of god!" (2009) click image to enlarge (pop up) Another tentacle-story happened in New York 2008. By then it was almost unthinkable to finish any drawing without tentacles. The way they are drawn has hardly changed since the beginning and they have become an authentic Alex Diamond signature, without ever taking the lead role in the stories told in the artworks. I was in a shop with some friends; they were looking for clothes and I was bored. Sitting down on a sofa, I found a large book lying forlorn in a remote corner of the shelf above me.  It was Ernst Haeckel’s (1834 – 1919) masterpiece “Art Forms In Nature”. A stunning showpiece of over 100 of Haeckel’s detailed, multi-coloured nature drawings published in 1904. I never had come across his work before, but it struck me as incredibly beautiful and painfully detailed. Turning page after page in awe, I came across an illustration of the Discomedusae (a jellyfish). And believe it or not - those tentacles looked pretty much exactly like mine. Not only in shape, but also in the way they “moved” across the page.  At that moment, Haeckel became a part of Alex Diamond. Or Diamond a part of him. And this book had to become mine, it seemed to be so influential, even if the influence came only afterwards. Haeckel and I, we shared the same interest and style and had developed something similar over 100 years apart. As a tribute to Haeckel, other forms of nature have crawled out of this book and inspired drawings in a few works in the project “Being Alex Diamond”.  Only the future can tell how long the tentacles will remain to fascinate me as an artist. All I can say is that they came by accident, developed their own life over a course of time, are filled with history and stories and have become a crucial element of my art.