BASEL.- Nature Never Loses surveys 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 began his artistic career in the 1960s amid political unrest, an interdisciplinary art scene, a booming post-war aerospace industry, and a rapidly transforming landscape. This exhibition, which comes to Switzerland for the first time following shows in the United States and the Netherlands, presents the most comprehensive view of Cheng’s work to date. From 3 December 2025 to 10 May 2026, Museum Tinguely showcases his early photographic sculptures, his Art Tools he created as part of his two key mailer ephemera works, and his Nature Machines that anticipate an artificial, human-made world. Extensive documentation highlights Cheng’s anticipatory visualizations of planetary fictions, including the Santa Monica Art Tool (1983–88), a roller drawn across the sand by a tractor to create a two-kilometer beach artwork, while delving into the integral role of John Doe Co LA. The exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the artist and makes use of never-before-seen archival materials and artworks from Cheng’s personal collection.

In 1966, Cheng incorporated his studio under the name John Doe Co. This move, made originally for practical reasons, poked fun at commodification of art and the brand of the artist, while also providing a simultaneous critique of corporate culture and the Vietnam War-era sentiment experienced as an Asian American. In the guise of John Doe Co., he has created sculptural ‘products’ that reflect his combined interest in the anthropological and post-technological study of humans and the environment, as well as their impact on the art market and the lack of his discipline’s wider societal impact.

The generosity, irreverence, and playfulness that infuse Cheng’s work are of a piece with his merging of organic materials and processes and his commitment to working in nature and public spaces. Throughout, Cheng has consistently probed the tensions of nature’s agency and the extent of human impact on the environment. Many of his greatest works are at once humorous, foreboding, and hopeful that ‘nature never loses,’ ‘nature always wins,’ and ‘nature is everything.’

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. At UCLA, Cheng studied with Robert Heinecken, who founded the photography program and cultivated an open-ended and experimental approach. This ethos, in conjunction with Cheng’s background in industrial design—he also briefly worked as a model maker in the office of designers Charles and Ray Eames—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 anthropomorphized nature (for example, a broken toaster) as ‘human rocks,’ observing that these objects had lost their function for domestic use but could be seen as artworks shaped by environmental forces such as weathering and erosion. He also created works from organic materials like lizard skins and cacti, and pursued sometimes decades-long durational processes of growth and decay as artistic methodologies. Cheng further explored this way of making in sculptures he dubbed Nature Machines, new products he created to reproduce natural phenomena and overturn conventional notions of authorship and artistic agency.

“MY WORK ACKNOWLEDGES EROSION, OBSOLESCENCE, WEATHERING, AND DECAY. IT’S PART OF THE WHOLE PROCESS THAT NOTHING IS PERMANENT.” — CARL CHENG

3. Travel and Specimens

Cheng’s travels in the early 1970s with his partner, graphic designer Felice Mataraé, deeply influenced his perspective as an artist. Living and travelling in Japan, Indonesia, India and other Asian countries 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. This comprehensive reappraisal eventually fostered his interest in making public art. His itinerant lifestyle also led him to produce smaller scale artworks that he could ship back to himself in Los Angeles, where he later incorporated them into larger projects. These include organic ‘specimens’ featured in artworks such as the Art Medicine Kit and elusive, small sculptures referred to as Emotional Tools.

“EVERYTHING CAN BE TURNED INTO AN ARTIFACT, A RELIC. THERE’S NO WASTE. IT ALL FINDS A PLACE.” — CARL CHENG

4. John Doe Co.

In 1966, Cheng began working under the name John Doe Co, 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. Eventually it also served as a commentary on the art market’s commodification of the signature style of the artist, and as a response to the Vietnam War-era social unrest and the marginalization he faced as an Asian American artist. Heavily influenced by Marcel Duchamp and his alter-ego Rrose Sélavy, Cheng maintained a sense of anonymity and the imaginative potential it offered. As John Doe Co., Cheng speculated on the future, producing a not-so-distant future-oriented environmental thesis: Nature Machines modeled the cumulative effects of the weather; kits and optional maintenance corporate materials speculated on new manual devices; and alternate realities that examined both the role and 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. Cheng was motivated to invent these new ways to make his work in response to the traditional privileging of tools such as chisel and brush over contemporary technological alternatives. 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.

Although Cheng has incorporated new technology into each succeeding model of these products, he prefers to avoid more automated and computerized systems, which might undermine his ability to operate and service each machine himself. The Art Tools thus 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

Shifting his focus in the 1970s, Cheng shifted from exhibiting stand-alone objects within conventional art galleries to creating large-scale, mixed-media installations and competing for Percent-for-Art public art commissions. In the 1960s, many cities across the US adopted a Percent-for-Art program whereby one percent of every development project’s budget was allocated toward public art projects, in effect creating a new need for and emphasis on art in public spaces around the country. In 1979, soon after Cheng staged the self-initiated Natural Museum of Modern Art, he was awarded his first official public art commission for Seattle Underwater.

Cheng’s background in industrial design provided him the skills he needed to create compelling and practical proposals, and his experimental approach to artmaking enhanced his ability to engage with environmental factors and materials. 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.

Curator

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.

Organization

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