Museum Tinguely
Until May 10, 2026

“Nature Never Loses” surveys six decades of the prescient, genre-defying practice of artist Carl Cheng (*1942). 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 engages with environmental change, the relevance of art institutions to their publics, and the role of technology in society. His inventive lexicon includes photographic sculptures, “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.

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 natural 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 addresses six aspects of Cheng’s work:

• Photography as a tool, as Cheng considers photography both as a framing device and an artistic tool that he uses to extract images from their context;
• Natural processes and nature machines, where Cheng subjected sculptural forms produced in his studio to environmental conditions such as weathering and erosion, created artworks out of organic materials like lizard skins and cacti and pursued sometimes decades-long durational processes of growth and decay as artistic methodologies, and created new products dubbed “Nature Machines” to reproduce natural phenomena and overturn conventional notions of authorship and artistic agency;
• Travel and specimens, which derives from his travels in the early 1970s that 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;
• John Doe Co., a name that Cheng began working under in 1966; which he registered as an LLC in 1970 not only for tax purposes, but also as a way to gain easier access to industrial materials; and which also served as a commentary on the art market’s commodification of the signature style of the artist, and as a response to Vietnam War-era social unrest and the marginalization he faced as an Asian American artist;
• “Art Tools”—alternative instruments for making art that are durable mechanical devices which Cheng uses to create ephemeral compositions such as drips of wax or paint and drawings made with sand;
• Public art projects and installations, which Cheng views as opportunities to work on a larger scale and reach a wider audience.

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.

https://www.tinguely.ch/en/exhibitions/exhibitions/2025/carl-cheng.html

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