About the Thing and the Thing Itself at Pop Up Art House

About The Thing and The Thing Itself A Collaborative Installation by Cathy Fairbanks and Laura Boles Faw ap-art-ment curated by Matthew Marchand Opening Reception: Saturday, October 8, 6 - 8 pm Exhibition Dates: October 8 - November 12, 2011

Pop Up Art House is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of the Los Angeles/San Francisco based collaboration ap-art-ment, About the Thing and The Thing Itself. This exhibition explores ideas of relationality and proximity to objects and others. For the progenitors of ap-art-ment, Cathy Fairbanks and Laura Boles Faw, collaboration is an ongoing conversation concerning the possibilities and potential of collaboration. This has become a more open dialogue as Fairbanks and Boles Faw now work in different cities. For About the Thing and the Thing Itself, ap-art-ment has created sets of material proxies that reference surrogacy. These proxies are manifest through various forms including sculpture, videos, photographs, and drawings. Since its inception in 2009, ap-art-ment has explored means of production and shared authorship that are charged. Through ideas of "thereness," boundaries and radical empathy, their newly imposed geographic distance has become a fertile space of inquiry. About the Thing and the Thing Itself will pair work made collaboratively with relevant works from their solo practices, all of which examine where collaborative boundaries lie. It is apropos that the Pop Up Art House exhibits the latest phase of ap-art-ment's collaboration. The cultural space that Cathy Fairbanks and Laura Boles Faw investigate resonates with a Las Vegas that stands astride a seam in American culture: proposing the familiar while maintaining a position in the fantastical. For ap-art-ment the Pop Up Art House becomes a boundary where two bodies of work, twice removed from the familiar and made in collaboration but at a distance, meet. Laura Boles Faw and Cathy Fairbanks of ap-art-ment hold MFA degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute. Boles Faw's work focuses on the re-stylization and thus re-definition of visual signifiers. Selected group exhibitions include Adobe Books Parlor, Mission 17, Royal Nonesuch, and Clara Street Projects. Recent solo exhibitions include Propped-Up: A Tale of No(Non)Sense at Ever Gold Gallery and A Love Story for The One. In August of 2011, Boles Faw co-curated the exhibit Over My Dead Body: A Collaborative Installation about Artistic Survival at Root Division Gallery in San Francisco. Fairbanks' work, which often communicates a sense of frustrated desires, has been exhibited across the western states. Her work has been seen at Bay Area venues such as Queen's Nails Annex, The Adobe Books Parlor, and Pueblo Nuevo Gallery. Her first solo exhibit, To Form, traveled to Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska, fall of 2010. She recently completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, summer of 2011.

http://ap-art-ment.blogspot.com

About The Pop UP Art House: The Pop Up Art House is a temporary, contemporary gallery in one of the many vacant storefronts in the Las Vegas Valley. PUAH is in an industrial area within the City of Henderson's Redevelopment zone, an area originally intended to rival Hollywood as the location of Jerry Lewis' Rainbow Studios. PUAH hopes to facilitate true revitalization that springs from vibrant and creative collaboration between local government, the community and artists bringing culture and diversity to previously derelict spaces. PUAH Gallery aims to take advantage of this economic downturn by offering a large exhibition space and bringing regional and national artistic voices into the local community with a challenging art program featuring emerging artists. Scott Dickensheets, Las Vegas City Life writes, "it does have a few things going for it: The location, on a declasse stretch of Sunset Road instead of downtown, is just off the freeway, and -- in contrast to the Main Street feel they're foisting onto Water Street -- PUAH's nabe is industrial, gritty, anti-suburban; and owner Shannon Mc Mackin seems committed to it. ....it's probably a good sign that this fledgling gallery in a Henderson backwater puts on airs -- -- as good as any high-falutin' gallery in town. Worth a drive down the 95." Vegas Seven calls it "one of the coolest projects to land in the Las Vegas Valley."

General Information: PUAH is located on 730 W. Sunset, Henderson, NV 89011. For information on PUAH please vist our websitewww.thepopuparthouse.com or contact Sam McMackin via telephone at 323-240-2888 or via email atsam@thepopuparthouse.com Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 2pm and by appointment