John Chamberlain’s “New Sculpture” installation at the 24th street Gagosian is like a car crash you can’t look away from – in the best of ways of course. Chamberlain’s famous twisted metal sculptures, on view through July 8th, stood tall and proud at the show’s opening earlier this month as onlookers showered the wheel-chair-bound artist with praise. The gallery was littered with Chamberlain’s larger than life works. In this installation, there is a constant fight against what should be and what is, against what is natural and what is man conceived. Car parts and car metals should be sharp, rough and industrial looking. The reds, blues, greens and blacks of auto paint and the gleaming shine of silver bumpers, are quite the opposite of colors found in nature. But Chamberlain twists and shapes his odd medium into elegant and almost organic looking pieces. While the viewer can still tell the object may have once been a car, the tall statues resemble more of an enigmatic tree trunk; it’s imperfect vines twisting and turning and wrapping around each other, effortlessly reaching up toward the sun. The tallest sculpture in the space certainly stood out. Reaching the galleries max height, the black and gold piece again defied all conventions of the material we are used to seeing every day. This piece resembled a great burning fire. The metallic black gold and silver finish looked as though it could be the sparkle of flames lapping at the ceiling of the gallery. This left viewers gazing up at the piece, their necks craned once again in that rubber necking fashion, standing in awe of nature and of man within one piece. The show uses a quote by Chamberlain. “I think of my art materials not as junk but as garbage,” noted the artist. “Manure, actually; it goes from being the waste material of one being to the life-source of another.” Terri Ciccone is the founder and editor of Contrapposto Blog and an Art Ruby contributor [gallery link="file" order="DESC" orderby="ID"]

This exhibition reconfigures a traditional exhibition. One striking "art work" is Maria Jose Arjona's story telling performance.

An installation view of Lite Brite Neon's "Edison Chandelier" from the Museum of Art and Design's Fluorescent Ball fundraiser.