Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses

Nature Never Loses is the first exhibition to survey six decades of the prescient, genre-defying work of artist Carl Cheng (b. 1942, San Francisco; lives and works in Santa Monica). Having studied both fine art and industrial design, Cheng first developed his art practice in Southern California in the 1960s, amid political unrest, an interdisciplinary art scene, a booming post-war aerospace industry, and rapid development of the landscape. His ever-evolving body of work, incorporating a variety of materials and media, engages with environmental change, the relevance of art institutions to their publics, and the role of technology in society—topics with urgent contemporary relevance. Originally recognized for his photographic sculptures, his inventive lexicon includes Art Tools employed in the production of ephemeral artworks, Nature Machines that anticipate an artificial world shaped by humans, and extra-institutional interventions intended to reach broad audiences.

In 1966, Cheng began working under the name John Doe Co. This move, made originally for practical reasons, poked fun at the commodification of art and the brand of the artist, while also serving as a simultaneous critique of corporate culture and the Vietnam War-era discrimination he experienced as an Asian American. In the guise of John Doe Co., he has created sculptural 'products' that reflect his conception of technology as an artistic tool and his skepticism of neoliberal notions of progress that have shaped both the art market and the tech industry.

The generosity, irreverence, and playfulness that infuse Cheng’s work are of a piece with his embrace of organic materials and processes and his commitment to making art in public spaces. Throughout, Cheng has consistently probed questions of nature’s agency and the extractive impact of humans on their environment, summed up in his frequent declarations, at once humorous, foreboding, and hopeful that 'nature never loses', 'nature always wins', and 'nature is everything.'

The exhibition is organized into six sections developed in conversation with the artist. These thematic groupings make clear the ambition and conceptual framework within his varied, multimedia practice. 

(1) Photography as a Tool
For Carl Cheng, photography is both a framing device and an artistic tool that he uses to extract images from their contexts. He attributes this approach to his studies at the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen, Germany (1964–5) and UCLA (BA 1959–63 and MA 1965–7), where he received an interdisciplinary, Bauhaus-influenced education that wedded art and industry. This ethos, in conjunction with Cheng’s background in industrial design grounds early series such as his molded plastic photographs and continues to inform his expanded engagement with lens-based media. 

(2) Natural Processes and Nature Machines
Cheng’s artistic concerns in the 1960s seem to anticipate the expanding awareness of environmental issues and later, in the 2000s, the concept of the Anthropocene, a term used to describe the current geologic era shaped by human impact on the atmosphere and landscape. Early in his practice Cheng began to experiment with natural phenomena as a sculptural tool and as a commentary on the way humans have impacted the landscape.
 
(3) Travel and specimens
Cheng’s travels across Asia in the early 1970s deeply influenced his perspective as an artist and changed his outlook on the value placed on discrete objects, Western modes of making art, authorship, and audiences. Embarking on a process of unlearning, Cheng began to question hierarchies among art, craft, and commerce as well as the insularity of art museums. 

(4) John Doe Co.
In 1966, Cheng began working under the name John Doe Co. As John Doe Co., Cheng creates sculptural products for a not-so-distant future of environmental collapse: Nature Machines that reproduce the effects of the weather; kits and optical devices that incorporate organic materials for analysis and imaginative use; and alternative entertainment devices that respond to the dominance of mass media. 

(5) Art Tools
Art Tools, alternative instruments for making art, are one of the key continuing product lines of John Doe Co. Cheng uses these “tools,” which are durable mechanical devices, to create ephemeral compositions such as drips of wax or paint and drawings made with sand. While Cheng’s earliest Art Tools were simple and small in scale, these rudimentary prototypes eventually evolved into sophisticated, motorized apparatuses and large, room-sized installations. The Art Tools demonstrate Cheng’s understanding of technology as both a set of limitations and a space of creativity and his conviction that we need to develop new formal tools and technologies for futures that have yet to be imagined. 

(6) Public art projects and installations 
Cheng views his public art projects as opportunities to work on a larger scale and reach a wider audience. He also sees them as an expanded investigation into what he terms 'human erosion'. For Cheng, the eventual deterioration of many of his public projects due to vandalism or lack of maintenance, as well as the ephemerality of artworks made from organic or natural materials, become metaphors for the precarity of a climate and landscape irrevocably changed by humans and their built environment.

Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses is curated by Alex Klein, Head Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Contemporary Austin, with assistance from Rachel Eboh, Curatorial Assistant, The Contemporary Austin, and Andres Pardey, vice-director and curator, Museum Tinguely.

A comprehensive publication will be released by JRP | Editions, documenting the oeuvre of Carl Cheng. With contributions by Alex Klein, Rachel Eboh, Joel Ferree, Celien Govaerts, Andres Pardey, Amanda Sroka, and Gloria Sutton.

The exhibition is organized by The Contemporary Austin in partnership with the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Bonnefanten, Maastricht; Museum Tinguely, Basel; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.