S.A.P. Synopsis and Exhibition Statement
Andrew James Paterson

S.A.P. Synopsis

Interdisciplinary artist Andrew James Paterson has been invited to gallerywest to present an exhibition in response to his 2008 videotape The Enigma of S.A.P. Therefore, his exhibition is called S.A.P. The works responding to the videotape include one analogue–flavoured installation, several frame–grabbed still images from the source video, seven paintings not unlike the sourced images in The Enigma of S.A.P., five silent animated projects, and a pair of concretely poetic text works. Every work in this exhibition has a title containing words beginning with S, A, and P. This exhibition positions pictures against language as well as analogue against digital. S.A.P. can also be interpreted as a site–specific or gallery–related performance.

S.A.P. Exhibition Statement

S.A.P. takes its title from my 2008 videotape The Enigma of S.A.P. This ten minute video shall be screened in gallery west's back room. This video is non-camera, with two main voices and three secondary voices. There is no music until the end of the video, until the single-frame editing has kicked in. The video's images are Photoshop drawings resembling colour-field paintings, against a white background akin to most galleries' white walls or cubes.

In the front room on either the west or east wall (let's work this out on site) there shall be some prints of still images from The Enigma of S.A.P. One will notice that the images in the video alter as its narrative progresses. Original images become distorted as the art event progresses. Once the music kicks in, the images are so distorted that their original or source images are truly forgotten. The latter images are passing stills which must be captured or else they would be lost to delirium. These frame grabs are numbered S.A.P. stills.

In the front room on either the east or west wall (let's work this out on site) there are paintings that might have been made by the anonymous members of S.A.P. (whoever they might indeed be). One has words, one has numbers, and four are abstracts of various ancestries. All of the paintings have titles involving words sequentially beginning with S, A, and P. All six paintings deploy only four colours...a deep yellow, a bright red, a deep blue, and black. S.A.P. artists like to assign themselves restrictive structures or boxes which they must force themselves to remain within.

On the wall near the gallery's hospitality desk, there will be two word–art works or framed concrete poems. These also involve SAP words. S.A. P. is nothing if not concerned about parallels or differences between language and pictures do they ever truly coexist? DO words or numbers in fact form images, or are they anti-images? Perhaps the two epicene gentlemen in The Enigma of S.A.P. enjoy this dialogue over croissants after morning foreplay?

In the front room somewhere, on a clothed table, there will be an "installation" called Simple Artist's Potluck. It will consist of two cheap plates containing analogue video noodles, to be washed down with red wine and eaten with basic cutlery. Perhaps the digital video artist has indeed gone analogue; or perhaps the analogue is artistically useless and can only be eaten hopefully without regurgitation.

It is perhaps useful to consider the S.A.P. exhibition to be performative if not a performance. Bodies filing space are indeed performative; and so are bodies of work fulfilling a directive to fill up a gallery.