Richard Serra’s two new steel works, “Junction” and “Cycle,” fill the cavernous galleries at the Gagosian in Chelsea, squeezing out all peripheral space.  Which means that you can’t really see them from the outside, as objects.  It’s hard to think of them as sculpture anyway.  They remind me of what former French president Francois Mitterrand called his national building program, “Grands Projets.”

Certainly, Serra has a mastery over some fundamentals of architecture (perspective, ground, procession) that would shame most architects.  Walking between the thick, curved steel panels and arriving at the spaces of refuge inside is a hypnotic, cinematic experience.  The steel shapes high, narrow spaces and blocks the stabilizing visual forces of ground and sky.  The forms, subtly curved in both directions, are powerfully charismatic; they lure you in and out.  And the steel has a powdery, pollen-like, oxidized surface that’s strangely organic.  These two sculptures are great, unguilty pleasures.