The Quiet Sublime of Steve McQueen

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Join Us The insistent resolve of Steve McQueen’s camera is well known. Whether circling the charred remains of Grenfell Tower or the dirty verdigris on the Statue of Liberty ; whether locking onto a submerged bicycle or a dead horse, McQueen is literal and specific about history’s traumas. Which makes his return to a coincidental, permissive mode of observation in tandem exhibitions at Dia Chelsea and Dia Beacon enlivening, if not always incisive.

We begin in Chelsea with “Bounty” (2024), a set of 47 photographs of flowers growing on the island of Grenada. Each saturated inflorescence is isolated in shallow focus, as if offering its beauty urgently. Lining three sides of the gallery, the work is met by “Exodus” (1992–97) on the fourth, a short film of twin coconut palms bobbing through London’s Brick Lane Market, carried by two West Indian men in fedoras.

You can feel the rush of discovery as McQueen, then a student at Goldsmiths .