About the exhibition:

“HABITAT: Infrared” is Alex Busuioceanu’s solo show, a capsule exhibition that condenses his interest in wild nature through the use of infrared photography. The selection presents a personal version of a broader project carried out between May and October 2025, during which the photographer, together with the Urban Rangers of the Bucharest Natural Park, explored the city’s wild areas. A different selection, but with a broader iteration, began at the end of 2025, when images complementary to the project were exhibited at Cărturești Carusel and at the Călărași Municipal Museum.

The current exhibition proposes a different way of looking at urban nature: not as a marginal backdrop or a mere accident of the city, but as an active habitat, existing in a state of fragile balance. Through the infrared technique, Busuioceanu does not simply document these spaces, but encapsulates them as possible relics of the present—images destined for an uncertain future, in which the relationship between humans, architecture, and the environment remains open and vulnerable.

In many of the frames, urban architecture appears in a functional and laconic form, yet also decrepit and fragmented—a sign of structures whose purpose has come to an end. In contrast, other images reveal new layers of the city emerging with the force and speed of invasive vegetation, which occupies, reclaims, and reconfigures space.

Human subjects are captured from behind, as in the image of a couple set within an apocalyptic and solitary landscape near Lacul Morii. Just as animals instinctively avoid being seen, people seem to adopt the same discretion in spaces such as Petricani, Valea Saulei, or Dobroiești—areas situated at the edge of urban visibility, where presence is always provisional.

Similarly, the swan submerges its head in the water, and its gaze is not directed outward but probes the depths, orienting itself toward a space inaccessible to immediate sight. Thus, the refusal of the gaze becomes a shared gesture that crosses the human and the non-human alike, marking adaptation to a habitat in which exposure implies vulnerability, and visibility is no longer a guarantee of control. Alex Busuioceanu becomes merely a discreet witness to these scenes.

In the absence of clear reference points that might animate or humanize the scene, the viewer is invited to construct their own points of orientation and to seek their own place within an apparently desolate landscape, defined more by what is missing than by what is shown.

The selection, however, operates through the artist’s double gaze: oriented both outward and inward, almost simultaneously. On the one hand, it is a careful investigation of the landscape, vegetation, and structures that survive within the urban fabric; on the other, it is a process of introspection and adjustment of the artist’s own sensibility, which begins with the artist himself. The landscape thus becomes not only an object of study, but also an instrument of self-investigation—a personal journey of becoming and of clarifying one’s own visual narrative.

This subtle intervention creates a constant tension between the real and the possible, between documenting a concrete space and constructing a personal aesthetic. “HABITAT: Infrared” thus situates itself at the boundary between documentary investigation and artistic interpretation, proposing an open reflection on how we look at, represent, and relate to nature within the city.