Select Few Slip Through Cracks, Subvert Artpocalypse

The artpocalypse rages on, claiming more victims -- like the ever-plucky Fette, who's had to close her gallery doors. We're looking at a bleak future where all of greater Chelsea may become replaced by garages and Best Westerns. And at this rate, sometime in 2050 or whenever this New Depression ends, we'll look back fondly upon galleries and wine-and-cheese receptions. We'll remark how delightfully chintz "the scene" was and recall it as fondly as many people recall "Old New York." By then, the world's supply of art will have been bought up, and we'll probably be back to the ages-old business mold of art patronage, with Banksy reduced to working for the Nilla wafer crumbs falling off Dick Fuld's plate. Either way, there are already a few artists and gallerists leading the way with innovation, poised to survive the fallout.

For shut-ins and art fans who find the sterile vaults of art galleries a little too cloistered, Photographers Limited Editions has done a neat job culling together works from impressive shutterbugs like Marc Baptiste, Iris Brosch, and Roxanne Lowit into an easily navigable online gallery. And this experience should increase accessibility to photogs otherwise best known in select circles, though not the mainstream. However, those who look forward to the stroll around the gallery itself as much as the works may find themselves feeling a little unfulfilled.

And for them, the classic experience is still alive. For the present, anyway. Gary Taxali, who last year dished about providing the art for Aimee Mann’s Smilers, celebrated the opening of his new show, “Hindi Love Song,” at Manhattan’s Jonathan Levine Gallery. His work is on display through May 2. An unclassifiable aesthetic that defies “pop art” just as it defies “Indian-inspired” looks to be the one watchword that’ll keep him from getting lost in the shuffle.

Then there are those who look to avoid the art fallout by thinking grand, like through the “Rhythms of Life” exhibition that showcases the work of Australian artist Andrew Rogers at White Box (ongoing through May 17). The exhibition includes 96 large-scale aerial and satellite photographs of Rogers’ land art, which is exactly what it sounds like: 32 sculptures crafted on media that include fjords, mountainous slopes, and national parks over the course of a decade. And for those who, like online gallery perusers, prefer their art contained to a manageable size, there is a handy nearly 500-page tome documenting this epic feat of art.