Jonas Kolb’s “Diamanten” Heads to Sotheby’s in Landmark Auction of Underground Art’s Most Mysterious Artifact

A rare piece of underground art history is set to enter the spotlight as Jonas Kolb prepares to auction the original “Diamanten” cassette through Sotheby’s. The landmark event will showcase a deeply personal work that exists between music, memory, and conceptual art.

Brunswick, Germany – Artist and curator Jonas Kolb has announced that the original silver cassette edition of Diamanten, one of the most enigmatic and controversial underground art releases of the past decade, will be offered at auction through Sotheby’s in late 2027.

Long regarded as a near-mythical object among collectors and cultural observers, Diamanten exists somewhere between a black metal recording, a conceptual artwork, and a carefully curated piece of performance art. Since its inception, access to the work has been deliberately restricted. The album has been experienced primarily through private listening sessions, highly limited physical editions, and a small number of invitation-only presentations.

At the center of the work is an intensely personal narrative. The album incorporates recordings drawn from deeply private moments, including portions of the funeral service of Kolb’s father and conversations connected to a former romantic relationship that ended under tragic circumstances. These elements, presented without traditional narrative framing, have fueled ongoing debates regarding artistic boundaries, authorship, memory, and emotional documentation.

The title Diamanten (“Diamonds”) derives from a family event that occurred in 2019, exactly ten years after the death of Kolb’s mother. Her cremated ashes were transformed into synthetic memorial diamonds by a Swiss funeral specialist. These gemstones became a central symbolic component of the project and informed both its title and conceptual framework.

The forthcoming Sotheby’s auction is expected to include the original silver cassette containing the earliest version of Diamanten, along with a selection of associated materials from the broader Diamanten universe. Among the artifacts under consideration are archival lookbooks, rare visual materials, documentation from previous editions, and a number of objects that have never before been exhibited publicly. The memorial diamonds connected to the project’s origin story are also expected to form part of the offering.

“The work was never intended to be consumed like a conventional album,” says Kolb. “Its meaning emerges through absence, fragmentation, rumor, and the relationship between the object and its audience.”

OFFICIAL LINKS: https://linktr.ee/jonaskolb