At the Baldwin: David Salle’s Vortex

ASPEN ” David Salle’s paintings have been called cold and calculated. But they are also undeniably compelling, both as thought pieces and as visually arresting works.

His recent Vortex Paintings, in which an array of objects are pulled into a collapsing center, can stop you in your tracks, with their swirls of color, distortions, and the sense that the world is being pulled into something against its will.

Salle, an Oklahoma-born 54-year-old who has been a top figure in contemporary art since the ’80s, first showed his Vortex images in Aspen at the Baldwin Gallery. The current set, in which the strength of the vortex is more varied, shows at the gallery through April 14.

Also showing is Dirk Westphal’s “Piscoli Fabulosi,” which includes fishbowl-like photographs.