The five large pieces in his new show at PaceWildenstein Gallery suggest that the sculptor John Chamberlain (b. 1927), now in his 81st year, has lost none of the playfulness and verve that have long characterized his efforts. And yet his methods continue to change. Best-known for polychrome sculptures constructed from crushed automobile parts, he has, in fact, worked in many media, from steel pipes to foam, foil, paper bags, and Plexiglas. The stainless steel from which the five new pieces have been made marks a relatively new material direction.

For years, Mr. Chamberlain has used chrome car bumpers, but, as he explains to gallery owner Arne Glimcher in a charming interview recorded at his Shelter Island studio and available at the gallery, bumpers today are usually made from plastic, and thus the chrome versions have become a scarce commodity. The story of his shift in material, however, begins in the 1970s, when he began to conceive an underwater sculpture to be submerged in sculptor Donald Judd’s swimming pool in Marfa, Texas. For such a piece, automotive parts, which rust, wouldn’t work, and so he eventually turned to chrome stainless steel.

The swimming pool sculpture wasn’t shown until 2005, but by then he had spent a number of years exploring the possibilities of chrome stainless steel. Still, the recent works on view at PaceWildenstein constitute a departure from much of the previous work both in form and color.

Standing almost 9 feet tall, “Popsicletoes” (2008) — his magnificently whimsical titles match the fancifulness of his structures — looks like shiny sea kelp bundled into a column. Strips of undulant stainless steel rise from wheel-like whorls on the ground, which prop up the work like feet, to waves and curls at its top. Throughout the piece, daubs and strokes of transparent pigments — green and yellow and blue — shade but don’t cover the material’s surface.

Mr. Chamberlain has usually deployed color with a master’s touch. More often than not, however, he has used opaque pigments blanketing entire strips or chunks of metal. Here both the pigments and their spare, almost staccato use impart a surprising lightness to his heavy pieces: Both the seemingly liquid consistency of the pigments and the strips in which the artist has applied them heighten the shininess of the chrome steel while still delighting the retina with the play of hues. In “Popsicletoes,” the mix of color and silvery metal ribbons recalls festive streamers.

Although his methods remain essentially the same — irregular parts being assembled so as to seem like regular parts, as he puts it — one imagines his use of stainless steel also allows Mr. Chamberlain more freedom with the forms he creates than automotive parts could afford. It would, for example, be difficult for him to achieve the relentlessly circular shapes of the other four pieces on view at PaceWildenstein with car bumpers. And even with these new works, he hasn’t entirely divorced himself from his automotive roots: As he explains in the interview, the stainless steel comes from van tops, which he buys by the thousand (they’re chopped off when the vans are customized) and has cut into long strips. These are then twisted, compressed in one of the artist’s two car crushers, or otherwise deformed before being fit and welded into sculptural objects.

“Smndtyrqurd” (2008), a 53-inch-high circular piece, has several sharp, angular protrusions. Rather than in daubs, the pigments have been applied in longer strokes, some with multiple colors: thin lines of green or red flanking broader yellow stripes. Almost two feet taller, “Gandersauce” (2007) forms a busier, less open aperture in the middle of its spiraling circle. And its blue, red, yellow, and green colors appear in relatively brief strokes.

Ribbons of steel with stretches of green paint twist and wriggle from the top of “Incidentallyneutered” (2008) like strands of wild, Einsteinian hair. Its metal strands flicker with combinations of red and green or red and blue paint intermingling with monochrome swaths of primary and secondary colors. The largest and most densely coiled of the circular pieces, “Nipplespierre” (2008) stands 8 1/2 feet tall, with just a few wispy ribbons of steel flying up from the top and curling at their ends.

Mr. Chamberlain — who studied at Black Mountain College, where he doubtless absorbed its ethos of chance and found materials — emphasizes the collage-like aspects of his methods, and certainly his earlier pieces, in which various crushed car parts were fit together, match that description well. He has likened them to piles of dirty clothes kicked around.

Yet his approach more recently, welding strips of stainless steel into spirals or writhing upright columnar bundles, would seem to allow the artist to direct the ultimate form his pieces take from the beginning. As such, they do not suggest collage per se. Nevertheless, Mr. Chamberlain insists that, like a collagist, he knows his pieces are finished “when there’s no more holes to fill.” No matter what notions guided their making, his recent works are tightly realized — not a metaphorical hole in sight.

Until March 15 (32 E. 57th St. at Madison Avenue, 212-421-3292).