City of Glass – exhibition by Andreas Fogarasi followed by roundtable discussion
A project initiated by Desire Foundation and the Căși Sociale ACUM!/Social Housing NOW! movement from Cluj, and implemented in collaboration with Aluvial and tranzit.ro/Cluj.
opening June 20th, 6pm
Address: tranzit.ro/Cluj, Str. Napoca no. 16, 1st floor, Cluj Napoca, Romania
Exhibition can be visited in the period 20 of June until 29 of August 2025, Monday to Friday, between 10 AM - 6 PM.
For his exhibition City of Glass at tranzit.ro/Cluj, Andreas Fogarasi is continuing the series “Nine Buildings, Stripped”, a project first presented in his solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Vienna in 2019.
“Nine Buildings, Stripped”, follows a selection of buildings that are to be demolished or stripped for refurbishment. Fogarasi’s work consists in collecting and presenting materials and surfaces from these buildings, creating sculptural portraits of specific places through time. For his exhibition in Cluj, Fogarasi and the members of the research project focused on three industrial sites of that have ceased or are about to cease production (and will soon be developed into commercial and apartment complexes): Sanex/Cesarom, Armătura and the Combinatul de Utilaj Greu. Fogarasi collected fragments, surfaces, and design elements from these sites, which will be or have been abandoned by industrial production and demolished to give way to new real estate investment projects which will reshape the city’s structure and life. City of Glass will feature the artworks created by Fogarasi from these materials, which condense the transformations that take place at the urban scale. The title suggests a particular sensitivity to the frailness of cities and could be read not just as remembrance of the once sparkling, now broken glass of the industrial city, but also a warning to the new and shining reflective façades of the developments that take their place. This frailty is also one of reflection: what do we see in the broken or cloudy surfaces of old industrial architecture, and how are we to appear in the seamless reflections that are produced by shopping malls and luxury apartments?
Andreas Fogarasi is an artist based in Vienna/Austria. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally, among others at MUMOK, Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; New Museum, New York; Ludwig Museum, Aachen/Germany; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, as well as the 52. Biennale di Venezia, where he was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation.
Roundtable discussion: Broken glass or real estate treasure?
With Andreas Fogarasi, Petro Ionescu, Adriana Măgerușan (architect), Mihnea Teodor Popescu, Doru Taloș, Enikő Vincze and George Iulian Zamfir
On June 21st, a roundtable discussion that will take place between 5:00 and 7:00 PM will address how the privatized and bankrupted factories (expressed by the metaphor of „broken glass” or broken windows) were transformed into sites of real estate development (the new „treasures” of Cluj, also known as „the treasure city”). The participants of this roundtable will focus on questions such as the histories hidden behind the „broken glass” (socialism, public goods, industrial labor, working class); why and who did break the glass (privatization, deindustrialization, the formation of capitalism); why does broken glass have to disappear (urban regeneration, consumption-based urban development, service economy); how is the „broken glass” transformed into a treasure, by whom, and for whom (real estate developers, investors, local public administration, architects, media); what happens after the „broken glass” is replaced with a new real estate product (processes of spatial exclusion, the increased costs of living including private rents and housing prices, the disappearance of industrial heritage, dislocation of people). Our roundtable articulates a critical perspective on profit-oriented urban transformations that erase public goods for the sake of private profitability, and contributes to collective actions for alternatives.
More details will be available shortly on the tranzit website and Facebook page.
The main partner of tranzit.ro is ERSTE Foundation.
Contact:
szilagyi@tranzit.org
