The golden quarter exhibition is the first community project suggested by me to the people

from Oradea. Growing in a newly built neighborhood in Oradea, I have always noticed the

cultural rupture between the place I am living in and the rest of the city. The difference is

mostly felt at night when I come home from the association, from a meeting or a pub. The city

centre is elegant, imperial and tidy, with decorated facades, institutions, green areas, benches,

terraces, monuments. A way to design and build the city that suddenly ends. Crossing the

quarter’s street guarded by blocks, represents a completely different way and another urban

culture. Moreover, between them there is no transition.

Like a matryoshka, Oradea is a city within another. The first one is slow, historical crystallized.

The second one, all round, was quickly built, paying more attention to the necessities than to

tradition. Neither of them represents a better solution. The Baroque palaces may look better

than the blocks, but they do not do the same as dwellings. And in turn, the blocks and the

systematized neighborhoods are a better solution than the suburbs with hovels.

The quality of maintenance is marked by the difference in the way the community relates to

the two realities. Both from the individual and from the collective. There are no monuments,

no cafes, art galleries or fountains in the quarter. There are no longer any lawns or sidewalks –

they were all turned into outdoor parking lots. The quarter is a dump of our urban frustrations.

and yet it is inhabited.

My project is a first attempt to draw a connection between the two. My interventions are due

to produce an echo of the culture from the city center, but transposed in the context of the

neighborhood. A garage can not have a dome of brass, but it may have a golden aerosol gate.

because no matter what the City Hall thinks, the citizens and even its inhabitants, the quarter is

part of Oradea. It deserves to be cared for, developed, to have recreation areas and to invest in

it. And the few thousand people who inhabit it deserve to enjoy the culture and beauty of the

city without having to get on the tram to look for it.

As for the city, it deserves an educated public. The palaces’ façades can not hide the

degradation of the walls; they parch and the city hall has decided to cover them with a net not

fall on people. However, the real degradation is the human one, which starts from the daily

disregard of the lack of perspective, of lassitude which costs us, as capote says, an IQ point per

year.

Forming a strong and intelligent public starts from here, from the quarter. Only this can

establish the culture and the way it will occur. Not the artists. The most they can offer is advice.

The game is the following: I put my record on the line for this exhibition. You have the

opportunity to continue it, this time legally, with permits and authorizations. Produce the

monuments that you think fit in the quarter. And if it works, which only depends on you, we

can start working seriously, because Oradea is full of quarter. Thank you