I think it's not just a way to attract attention, by putting up a shallow edifice to 'being different, being daring'. There is a deeper purpose at play here. They are trying to make people think about what is beauty, how we look at beauty and judge it while getting us to open our minds that jumbled forms that may appear ugly on a superficial level can ultimately have more beauty as they require more mental work, hence ultimate appreciation. It's like when you try to understand a really difficult peice of music, at first it's awful then after about 5 listens you find it fare more 'beautiful' than any accessible pop song that is considered 'pretty at first listen', so to speak.
They are trying to change notions of idealism and symmetry and that could relate to people too since many write off those with less than perfect faces and the unhealthy obession with perfection that is symbolized by photoshopped models on magazine covers today in this highly image focused world. This all leads to pretty unhealthy behaviors with people. Just as people, beauty in cities is idealized, and pure beauty can even be a cancer that envades cities, locking them into a set form that is unchanging hence less dynamic cities, cities that are forced to exist as mere tourist museum cash-cows for the most part because people won't budge from their preset views on beauty and their need to preserve this ideal-- we see this in a few old european cities.
That said, it's still a POS and has ultimately failed as a visual entity. HAHA
This is where contextualism makes no sense to me. He's trying to be industrial to fit in to the meatpacking district, but he won't settle for building something that fits-in, ie, brick, brown, old. This ends up being the worst of both worlds. A modern more gracious design that looks different (i.e, not inspired by the surroundings) would have been ultimately better as the average joe who is not inclined to 'think about architecture long than a quick "that's ugly, that's pretty", will have no interest in this building, writing it off as something "what were they thinking", and not in a spectacularly weird way that coffee-table travel books will highlight as a place to visit before you die. This is not the Bilbao gallery, or the one in Austria where weirdness is enough to get the write ups and money-shots in the 50 best places to visit books, this one is just a 'too many cooks' scenario and won't end up being a memorable building.
So yeah, it's a clunky way to end the highline for sure. It's sad because something far cooler could have been build if they weren't going for for trying to fit in to this edgy take on old industrial styles and making people 'think' which will ultimately fail, because people don't think that much about buildings outside a tiny percentage. As a 'look at me I'm a rebel' building it's a failure because it tried to fit in to a scheme from the past (meat packing style) by taking elements of warehouses and factories, hence it has already failed to be unique anyway.
Contexntualism has its place, but not when you're trying to make a statement as an art galleriy devoted to changing people's perceptions and altering how they see.