Primary Research Lab: Matt Drews

As a part of the ongoing summer events in the Outdoor Sculpture Collection at WWU, Western Gallery invites you to this special performance event.

Seattle dancer Matt Drews and collaborator Gil Bar-Sela have been commissioned to respond choreographically to Scott Burton's Two Part Chairs, Right Angle Version (a pair), 1983/1987, and organized a response which frames the sculptures as a site of connection: Burton's minimalist chairs and the performers bodies are activated; both utilitarian and weight bearing, sacred and soaked with knowledge. The performers bodies traverse a physical conversation with the sculptures, blurring the distinction between the raw materials at play, in order to unravel what is essential.

Matt Drews is a movement artist who oscillates between the realms of dance, yoga and performance. Drews has created work in response to contemporary art before, including recent projects in collaboration with Kate Wallich for the Seattle Art Museum and Frye Art Museum, and with Corrie Befort for the Henry Art Gallery. This past winter was spent with Kate Wallich + The YC at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency.  This summer they will present two excerpts at Jacobs Pillow, Massachusetts. Drews is currently choreographing and performing in Saint Genet's experimental opera "Frail Affinities" which premiered at the Donau Festival (Krems, Austria) 2016 and is co-presented with Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria) 2017.

PRIMARY RESEARCH LAB will host a series of engagement labs where we will create active platforms for encountering works of minimalism from the collections at WWU. These labs will highlight the physicality of these encounters. Through commissioned works, events, tours, listening sessions and screenings the lab series will contribute a contemporary and sensory perspective on these artists forms.


Learn more about the exhibit and see all the Labs.

Photo credit: David Višnjić - "Frail Affinities" Saint Genet - Donau Festival 2016