Regeneration Gap is the title of a new installation by Canadian-born artist Jarod Charzewski on view at the Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto. The exhibition features three major works, each representing a cross section of a hypothetical landscape, complete with revealed geological layers, created entirely out of used clothes. The artist obtains the used clothes from local Goodwill stores, which are given on loan from the store and returned at the closing of the exhibition. Also on view are several large-format photographs from a previous installation titled Scarp, which was presented this fall at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina.

The artist’s work illustrates the reality of consumer culture’s effect on the landscape by actually reconstructing a cross section of the landscape made entirely of used clothes. Perhaps the most interesting component of this process is that the work is created using recycled materials which are taken from and reintroduce into the market place, without actually creating any new consumption.

Charzewski is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and has completed recently solo exhibitions Vortices at Trinity Square Video in Toronto and Vanishing Point at Ace Art in Winnipeg, Canada. The artist currently teaches sculpture at the College of Charleston, School of the Arts.

Currently on view at Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) in Chelsea is new work by artist Dana Schutz, in the exhibition Missing Pictures. This marks the fourth solo exhibition for the artist at Zach Feuer Gallery. The show mostly contains large-scale paintings supplemented with a few smaller works.

The paintings in Missing Pictures depict a variety of social situations contained within both interior and landscape scenes. Images of people engaging in a game of chess and group massage are activated through a surreal fragmentation leaving some figures literally ripped with seams exposed. Many of the figures, which are loosely rendered, seem to be rather comfortable existing within the turbulent and sometimes mildly horrific scenes.

Formally, the artist utilizes a diverse application of paint within this new body of work. Stains, washes and linear mark making exist alongside thickly applied paints. The resulting effect seems to make the paintings dissolve before the viewer.

Schutz, who was born in 1976 and graduated from Columbia University in 2002, has exhibited internationally. The artist’s work appears in the permanent collections of many museums including the Guggenheim, NY, the Hammer Museum in LA and the Museum of Modern Art in NY, among others.

Currently on view at 2×2 Projects in Amsterdam is a solo show of work by Berlin based artist Torsten Ruehle, entitled FILTER. FILTER is Ruehle’s debut solo exhibition in Amsterdam, and features a variety of his recent works in conjunction with the early 2009 release of a published catalog of his work, also entitled FILTER. Ruehle’s astutely political and socially provocative paintings are at first imagined by the artist when he spots images in newspapers, movie stills and even other painters’ work. In a manner of creative interpretation that sometimes mingles with appropriation, and other times gets so worked over by the artist’s hand that any trace of the former image is lost for good, Ruehle’s paintings have a childlike accessibility to them, despite the often heavy subject matter. With thick black pigment pen outlines, citing his graffiti art background, he presents us with the essence of the scene without overindulging in visual minutiae. FILTER opened on March 21st and runs through April 25, 2009.

Torsten Ruehle was born in Dresden, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited in solo shows internationally, including at Galerie Kai Hilgemann in Berlin and Galerie Hubert Schwarz in Greifswald.

RARE Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in the heart of Chelsea, New York. Their aesthetic primarily encompasses artists that exude a youthful irreverence, as well as exhibit a love for unusual execution, craft, and a consideration of material and process as part and parcel of their conceptual frameworks.

DailyServing’s Sasha M. Lee recently caught up with RARE Gallery founder and president Pete Surace and director Ryan Brennan to discuss the gallery, their process for selecting artists & nurturing their careers, the climate of art gallery economics and their philosophies on the artistic practice, its role in contemporary society, and RARE’s particular contribution to the dialog.

Installation of Donovan Barrow’s exhibition Portraits of Villa Savoye, 2009

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Entitled Soft Skills, Birgit Megerle’s exhibition at Galerie Neu in Berlin presents her most recent suite of paintings. Megerle’s past exhibition in 2007 at Daniel Reich Gallery in New York laid the groundwork for using the gallery’s physical space to make painting theatrical. At Galerie Neu, she extends this line of thinking, showing how ideas are transposed between painting, music and literature.

A flaneur smokes his pipe, caught in a stroll, he glances sideways towards the viewer. His riding boots gleam in a gentle light, just like the locks of his straight brown hair. He’s haughty and a bit sly. His life-size counterpart faces him from the side of the space. Hidden behind her dark jumper and polka dot sleeves, she may be as deceitful as she is demure. Told by the canvas laying face up on the gallery floor, something nefarious has transpired – a murder for reasons still unknown. One sees a figure – a boy with fair skin wearing blue jeans – laying limp and lifeless across a rectangular abstraction. Its palette of faded sage, turquoise, and olive greens make for eccentric tiling. As romantic as it is criminal, Megerle’s paintings ask that one imagine what series of events has led to this point. These figures are further characterized by a number of abstract geometric works. Their patterns and texture emulate architectural reliefs or patterned fabric and arguably are the strongest works in giving the exhibition its calculated aesthetic. While the size of the works are quite different, they each still impart a feeling of a small vignette, which comprises the larger. Trying to create linearity is futile, as anything that gets pieced together is just as easily rehashed into another story. What does create continuity is the specific piano soundtrack Megerle created. The track is synonymous with the sensual aesthetic of the work; no matter in what medium Megerle works, there is nuance and deliberation.

Birgit Megerle is a painter in Berlin. In the past, her work has been exhibited at Galerie Drantmann in Brussels, Galleria Fonti in Naples, and Galerie Christian Nagel in Cologne. She is represented by Galerie Neu in Berlin and Daniel Reich Gallery in New York City.

In a world where tabloids trump real news, artist Rachel Kaye embraces celebrity culture through the reappropriation of paparazzi images into her own medium. She creates paintings, drawings, and sculpture that mimic a world washed by fame, excess, and money. Exhibiting at Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco, Kaye’s solo show, The Colony, draws its name and concept from the early-twentieth century Colony Clubs created for New York socialite women. Her work moves amongst the social circles of the fictional Blair Waldorf from the television series Gossip Girl, to a portrait of Wyntoon, William Randolph Hearst’s secret Northern California hamlet, complete with colorful gestures alluding to the famous murals of Willy Pogany, that are painted on the cottage’s exterior. Kaye’s painting technique is reminiscent of her famous contemporaries Elizabeth Peyton and Hernan Bas–figurative, representational, and, as described by Triple Base, “loose and whimsical”. For The Colony, Kaye has curated the arrangement of her works in a salon-style display akin to a way that they might have been seen at the real Colony Club. She has also made sculptures of paper mache–almost mockeries of the sculptural ornamentation of the wealthy–and a bubble-gum pink ottoman invites guest to lounge and enjoy the glitz of the fabulous world of the rich and famous.

Rachel Kaye received her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2004 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The Colony will be on view at Triple Base until March 22, 2009.

The Sharjah Biennial opened on March 16th in the Arts and Heritage Area of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and will run until May 16th. The Biennial consists of three components with the main exhibition taking place in the Sharjah Contemporary Art Museum, curated by Isabel Carlos, and titled “Provisions for the Future.” This segment explores the connection between the search for happiness and the utopian state in humanity as a contributing factor to its dislocation. The second component is the Performance and Film Program, “Past of the Coming Days,” curated by Tarek Abu El Fetouh, partially taking place in The Calligraphy Museum. Additionally, the “March Meeting” draws together art institutions and professionals from around the world for an annual meeting which affords visitors the possibility to connect and discuss future collaborations.

For the past 18 years, the Biennial has enriched contemporary art presentation and practice in the region and has proven to be an integral ingredient in the cultural expansion taking place in the UAE. The ninth installment of the Sharjah Biennial provides a fertile ground to discuss the cultural challenges this Emirate must confront in the face of globalization.