Carl Cheng. Nature Never Loses

This extensive and hefty landscape-format catalogue serves as a timeline – in book form – along which the work of Carl Cheng can be explored with great freedom. Around 140 works spanning six decades – photographs, artefacts, installations, spatial design sketches, concept artworks, etc. – are presented in chronological order in the main section of the book, generally across one to four pages. The bottom edge of each page features the name of the work and the year of its creation in large Helvetica type, emphasising the passing of time. While this can appear somewhat repetitive when turning the pages, it allows the reader to enter the book at any point. The individual pages contain up to ten mostly uncropped images in an array of sizes and formats, arranged almost like text into continuous columns, always filling the full height of the page, but not always conforming to the column width. Also included are two types of short texts: descriptions of the works (in Helvetica) and the artist’s subjective recollections (in a typewriter font). With no clear order or hierarchy imposed, the materials offer diverse and accessible ways into the works yet do not hide their complexity. Outstanding image processing results in high print quality. Given its size and the landscape format, the book is relatively unwieldy, but a folding cardboard wrapping – the inside of which features three drawings as a striking graphic introduction – provides the volume stability while on a bookshelf.

Editors
Alex Klein, Rachel Eboh, Austin (US); Jennifer Krasinski, Brooklyn (US)

Author
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Design
Studio Lin – Alex Lin, Chiara Alexandra Young, Brooklyn (US)

Printing
Wilco Art Books, Amersfoort (NL)

Publisher
JRP|Editions, Genève (CH)

ISBN
978-3-03764-620-5