Carl Cheng

On the last March weekend of 1988, visitors to Santa Monica State Beach witnessed something peculiar: a 14-tonne concrete roller, Carl Cheng's Santa Monica Art Tool (1988), embossing the sand with an aerial view of a Los Angeles-inspired metropolis.

- Cassie Packard

Titled Walk on L.A., the topography teemed with cars, motorways, buildings and handprints (a tongue-in-cheek gesture, since Cheng's artmaking 'tools', which yoke his industrial-design acumen to conceptual projects, minimize evidence of his hand). As beachgoers realized the work's titular directive, the cityscape dissolved back into sand. Periodically activated until 2007, Cheng's project challenged the prevailing vision of public art - and land art - as permanent, static and monumental. Its ephemerality - an allusion to the precarity of California's coastal infrastructure amid anthropogenic climate change - feels particularly poignant today, as Los Angeles grapples with the aftermath of devastating wildfires.