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.

There is yawning gulf between drawing and sculpture, between the presence of a sheet of paper and that of a full-bodied object in space.  Sculptor Richard Serra’s drawings from the early 1970’s to the present, on exhibit now at the Met, reach across that divide.  There are drawings that are imagistic, offering views of objects.  There are drawings that are diagramatic, sketching configurations for sculptures.  There are drawings that are architectural, huge paint-covered linen panels stapled to the wall, that play against the gallery floor, wall and ceiling.  And, most thrillingly, there are drawings that are so thickly encrusted in eddies and streams of paint that they become sculptures themselves.

Each type of drawing has a different power.  The sketches are the least compelling.  While they depict forms clearly they’re unrelated in spirit to Serra’s sculptures, which are so densely material.  (There is one stunning exception, a rendering of the “Tilted Arc” that, in four thick strokes of paintstick, captures all of that immense, looming figure.)  It’s heartening to see all the drawings together.  They show the sculptor grappling with the properties of a form that, up until the 1990’s, seems to elude him.  (One rather desperate series from the 1970’s, “Forged Drawing,” consists of hubcap-sized slabs of steel that are coated with painstick and then hung on the wall.)  But when Serra gets it right, his drawings have all the viscuous sensuality of a Rothko canvas, only with a greater sense of weight.  These drawings have no space in them, they’re all stuff.

The Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street is a great space to begin with.  Like many Chelsea galleries, which are converted warehouses and garages, it’s a broad, clean space.  But the Gagosian is twice the size of neighboring galleries and, when properly choreographed, a fantastic backdrop for contemporary art.  I saw Damien Hirst’s first New York show there, dazzled by the formaldehyde tanks holding a shark and (in transverse slices) a cow.  And I saw Richard Serra’s 2003 show there, thunderstruck by the grandeur of the immense, curved steel forms.

The current exhibit of painter Rudolf Stingel’s work is a similar kind of knock-out.  Not the art, mind you, but the exhibit.  Stingel’s paintings, all super-sized, aren’t memorable but they have richly textures surfaces.  The large entrance gallery, which features three portraits on three separate walls, is boldly unnerving.  The largest gallery, which contains seven gold color-field canvases, has a lyrical, romantic feeling.  And passing through the narrow back gallery lined with silver carpet paintings feels like a giddy, Pop Art daydream.  Say what you will about their curatorial efforts; the people over at the Gagosian know how to put on a show.