Back & Forth is a project from MSK Ghent and S.M.A.K. During the summer of 2018, Oswald Oberhuber returns to the MSK.
On 20 October 2017 the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK) and the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (S.M.A.K.) kicked off a long-term project in which the inextricable links between the two museums are highlighted and updated. Their historic ties inspire a series of encounters. Artworks from the S.M.A.K. collection will temporarily return to the space for which they were created or where they were presented for the first time. The two museums will also establish new relationships between old, modern and contemporary art with the exchange of meaningful masterpieces. The resulting dynamic dialogue simultaneously emphasises the complementarity and unique identity of the two museums and their collections.
The start in 2017
To start this collaboration, David Hammons’s installation Chasing the Blue Train was installed in the Lambeaux gallery again, where it was exhibited for the first time in Europe in 1991. In addition, the MSK incorporated works by Antonio Saura and Serge Poliakoff from the S.M.A.K.-collection in its historical collection. There they interact with their artistic forebears.
Oswald Oberhuber returns to the MSK
Until 4 November 2018, the MSK presents the monumental canvas Carolus Magnus by the Austrian artist Oswald Oberhuber (1931) in its Lambeaux-room. This 35 meter long frieze was created specifically for this space in 1984 and now temporarily returns to it. Oberhuber created a narrative and expressive panorama of a Medieval battlefield with armoured soldiers, dying horses and tombstones. The battlefield is overlooked by the emperor Charlemagne.
