The wrecking ball is already making swift work of demolishing the former site of the Deitch Projects gallery on the corner of Grand Avenue and West Broadway in SoHo. The huge studio in Long Island City closed two months ago, making the gallery at 18 Wooster the last space standing in the Deitch Projects inventory.

Through the month of May, it will host the works of political-activist artist Shepard Fairey, the last show to be exhibited in the Deitch Projects history. By June 1, Deitch Projects will conclude its 15-year run as a game-changing art gallery whose out-of-the-ordinary marketing strategies revolutionized the art culture in New York City.

Deitch Projects didn't fall victim to cold winds in the economic climate. To the contrary, by all accounts it has been nothing but a success. But such success comes with offers, and founder and owner Jeffrey Deitch has finally found an offer he is willing to accept. Next month, after the Deitch Projects galleries all close, he will head to Los Angeles to become the director of MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art.

It is Deitch's ability to spot young emerging talent that probably led to his appointment as director at MOCA. During his tenure as director of Deitch Projects, he has represented the highly recognized artists Keith Haring, Kehinde Wiley and Shepard Fairey, as well as dozens of lesser-known artists whose work holds the same potential for super-stardom.

The Deitch Projects gallery conception was an experiment that also incorporated performance art.

Fischerspooner, a local music, dance, fashion, design and photography group, became part of the stable of artists represented by the gallery, as did The Citizen's Band, a self-branded sociopolitical vaudeville troupe.

Deitch Projects was masterful at gaining exposure for its artists in ways that increased the cultural cache and currency. Over the years, the art industry elites, art admirers, and starving artists and their friends were all welcomed into the gallery — a social pot mixing that recognized the value that each party brought with it in making the art market sizzle and soar.

Deitch Projects also showed great sensibility and adeptness in taking the art out of the galleries straight to the cultural taste-makers who could, and often would, turn an artist or act into a household name.

In 2006, in one audacious move, Deitch Projects paired with others to carry out an Art Parade up West Broadway, a spectacle featuring costumed performers parading along with fantastical props and floats. The event was a publicity powerhouse, leading Deitch to restage it in 2007 and 2008.

Taking controversial artists into his fold was also part of the non-traditional approach Deitch employed. Haring, who practiced graffiti in the subways, was just one artist with revolutionary, controversial or "statement" work whom Deitch embraced. Fairey, dubbed a "street artist," whose work now fills the entire hanger-like space on Wooster Street, is one of the latest.

Fairey is best known for the colorful Obama "HOPE" series of collages that were circulating everywhere during campaign season and landed on the cover of Time magazine after the election. In this exhibit, he takes his signature style and applies it to other revolutionary figures in a show called "May Day." The latest cover his work graces, Time Out New York, timed to coincide with his opening week at the gallery.

The Wooster Street space, an atmosphere of white with exposed beams, wooden floors and wide walls, is perfect for contemplating the largesse of Fairey's achievement. Icons are rendered more iconic with Fairey's use of collage and color, each complete with insertions of his signature elements.

These include the five-pointed star with a face in the middle, the clamshell waves, paisley patterns, World War II-era government propaganda and Russian Constructivist styling. His art reminds, provokes, criticizes, satirizes and elevates individuals in majestic grandeur. Heroic, revolutionary figures profiled in this series include Cornell West, Muhammad Ali, Aung San Sui Kyi, the Burmese woman held in home arrest for over a decade, and the Dalai Lama.

Iconoclastic artists and musicians, another favorite of Fairey's, result in illustrations of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jean-Michel Basquiat and, in a tribute, Haring. Dozens of other collages line the walls, each one fascinating and different in its own way. In the back, four larger-than-life murals stand, replicas of the quartet currently showing on a Deitch Projects wall at the northwest corner of Houston Street and the Bowery. These are priced at $75,000 each.

On the Deitch website, Fairey thoroughly explains his use of the term "May Day" and its connections to revolution, struggle and the face of impending doom. Culturally, the show has already proven its popularity. At a book signing on May 3 at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca for a new work containing the memoirs of Haring, Deitch, with Fairey in attendance, said, "A lot of people told me this was the biggest opening in the history of commercial galleries in New York. [On Saturday] there could have been 5,000 people there."

At the event, Fairey said, "I hope that because of my art young people think that they can make art that inspires people too."

Deitch Projects Gallery and "May Day" will close permanently on May 29.