On Thursday 1 September 2022 S.M.A.K. and the other Ghent museums will keep their doors open until 10 pm. Come along for an evening visit to the current exhibitions, music and a drink or ice cream at Crèmerie GUILLAUME.
Enjoy a free guided tour on Late Thursday. Our S.M.A.K. guide takes you through our current exhibitions. Under the expert guidance of your guide, you will discover the many and fascinating layers of contemporary art. The tour starts at 19:00.
Citadelic Jazz provides your portion of live music on Thursday evening. Sureau, consisting of Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (voice), Kris Vanderstraeten (percussion) and Jean Demey (double bass), takes the stage.
Since 2000, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg has organised more than 200 improvisation concerts in Brussels and gives workshops on vocal techniques in various cities. He writes passionately about music, but is above all an improvisational singer pur sang from the Brussels region. He juggles throat singing, overtones, jodles, mouth sounds, almost 3 octaves, falsettos, multiphonics and invented languages.
Since the seventies Kris Vanderstraeten has been experimenting with his unique line-up. He uses a drum kit as a sound generator and explores texture, dynamics and space.
Bassist Jean Demey has performed on all five continents, but you could also catch him at one of his exhibitions in Flanders or Paris. Nowadays, he concentrates on sound sculpting with his double bass.
Splendid Isolation examines how artists are or have been creative during periods of isolation. Whatever the cause of isolation may be, many artists seize upon this situation to make work: out of necessity, as a way out, as an accusation or as a testimony.
The projects of Lydia Ourahmane (b. 1992, Saïda, Algeria) often start from events in her personal environment or from objects of pervasive social, political or economic significance. These objects give rise to investigations into the way in which repeated histories of forced displacement and colonial oppression inscribe themselves on individual lives, bodies and structures. For Barzakh, Ourahmane moved the entire contents of her Algiers flat to Europe during the 2020 lockdown.
At the center of N. Dash’s work (b. 1980, Miami, Florida, US) is a commitment to the energy of transformation, movement, and care. The artist incorporates materials such as earth, paint, plastic bottles, string, agricultural netting, strips of Styrofoam, cast-off cardboard, and jute, into complex, often multi-panel compositions that draw from the languages and methods of sculpture, photography, and printmaking. With a notable economy of means, N. Dash’s work expresses the tension between industrially produced goods and naturally occurring substances in an ecological vision that honors the land and its unseen energies.
S.M.A.K. is again showing works of art from the Matthys-Colle collection. The current exhibition is an imaginary portrait of Marc De Cock, the former chairman of the Society of Friends. He can easily be called one of the inspirers of S.M.A.K. Discover how works by Berlinde de Bruyckere, Bruce Nauman and Gilbert & George, among others, represent his person and his commitment.
