The curious started to show up at the soaring, gallerylike space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, around 10 on a recent Sunday morning, wearing skaterish black knit caps, or on-trend Italian sneakers, or minimalist single-line tattoos. They paused, as in reverence, at the doorway, taking a quizzical glance at the striking metallic installations (industrial sculptures, in a sense) glimmering on the bare concrete floors.

They had come to this remote waterfront neighborhood, once home to longshoremen and now to galleries and Post-Expressionists, to check out the latest work not by Koons or Hirst but, rather, by Musk — Elon Musk, a founder of Tesla Motors.

In a corporate statement as audacious as anything in the Whitney Biennial, Silicon Valley’s futuristic maker of electric luxury cars has opened a showroom, of all things, in the middle of one of Brooklyn’s edgiest arts quadrants.