Carl Cheng by Emily Zimmerman: Nature as energy
By Emily Zimmerman for BOMB Magazine.
March 26, 2025
Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses is the first retrospective of Cheng’s sixty-year career, currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The exhibition explores pressing issues such as climate change, industrial waste, and forced obsolescence, as it highlights the interconnections between humans, technology, and natural systems. Cheng’s interactive, self-sustaining sculptures and installations mimic environmental processes. Throughout his career, Cheng has maintained a multidisciplinary practice that merges the analytical perspective of an artist with the experimental approach of an industrial designer, resulting in artworks that are complex, experimental, and genre-defying. At once visionary and scientific, Cheng’s artworks offer poignant reflections on a world facing environmental crisis, while they also emphasize nature’s resilience and remind us that in the end nature never loses.
Emily Zimmerman
Your artwork places human logic in tension with the natural world by taking on topics ranging from technology to the museum. Can you talk about how your work places pressure on the museum’s relationship with time?
Carl Cheng
Working the way I do, I didn’t think I could fit into a museum context, especially in the early days. Collecting is a primary concern of museums, which means that things have to fit a certain set of criteria that I didn’t see myself fitting into. I’ve always looked for the not-so-permanent aspects of art. I didn’t see myself fitting into that type of context, even though I think of myself as an artist.