Though twelve paper sculptures hang from the gallery ceiling, a grid of drawings covers one wall and a video projection takes over another in Gladstone Gallery’s cavernous 21st Street space, Joan Jonas’ new installation ‘Empty Rooms’ feels more subtly presented than many of her past multimedia works. Overhead, boxy forms dominate the gallery, floating like geometric clouds or 3-D kites and lit from within like lanterns. Made of wrinkled paper (along with lights and steel frames), the sculptures connect with a towering grid of similarly textured paper bearing drawings of leafless trees. Featuring the silhouette of a turbine and a young woman, a monochrome video adds a human actor to this enigmatic but intriguing view of the natural world. (On view in Chelsea through April 12th).
