Alexandre de Betak on getting lost to find himself in London

On a gloomy evening in London earlier this week, tucked away behind the busy streets of Marylebone, one house on a quiet mews shone brighter than the rest, throwing light across the wet cobblestones. Through an open door, we glimpse a wall of dazzling light and a small team making careful adjustments to a grid of modular panels. A closer look confirms that one of the workers is world-renowned artistic director Alexandre de Betak himself. He greets us mid-video call, bespectacled and smiling broadly.

The unassuming London location is the site of de Betak’s new studio, his first independent venture since stepping back from the megalith production house, Bureau Betak, that he spent his career building. The lighting installation he is working on here is momentous – both in its physical presence and its personal significance – marking a new city and a new chapter in which his personal practice and artistic journey take centre stage.

But why London? ‘I’ve been asked that so often in the past few days,’ he laughs. ‘Maybe because everyone’s leaving. I find that intriguing – when everyone goes, I want to come. It creates a sense of newness, a new beginning.’

Having produced his first fashion show at 19 and opened his agency, Bureau Betak, in 1990, he left Paris for New York in 1993 when he was in his early twenties. ‘I kind of fell into this world by accident when I was very young,’ he recalls. Over the past three decades, he has built a global reputation for staging some of fashion’s most spectacular shows – from Dior’s delphinium-covered tent in Paris to Saint Laurent’s glittering spectacles beneath the Eiffel Tower.

In more recent years, he has divided his time between Mallorca and Paris, but London, he feels, is in a state of transition – a place where shifting fortunes are creating space for new beginnings and more interesting creative voices. ‘There’s a punk creative freedom here that I’ve always felt,’ he says excitedly. ‘Paris can be too perfect, too historical, too boxed-in. London has a kind of free-spirited energy – it’s raw, it’s experimental, it’s always the place where things start.’

The installation, which opens today during Frieze Week, is designed to evolve. De Betak describes it as ‘an installation in progress’. Spread across the ground floor of two conjoined mews houses, the installation is made of two contrasting halves – one clad entirely in light fixtures, and the other painted black, with a walkway made from the same modular panels and a mirrored wall set on a diagonal. The work is inspired by office fluorescents – ‘the worst lights in the world,’ as he calls them – reimagined into warm, flattering ‘Hollywood beauty light’. ‘It’s a mix of disorientating and beautiful,’ he says, standing before the mirror in the black room. ‘At night it becomes very warm, still very bright. Everyone who comes here will be glowing – I promise.’

For de Betak, the space is not a gallery but a working atelier: ‘It’s a place to create and to reflect,’ he says. The installation – and the studio itself – will remain in flux. He plans to knock down walls, lift floors and keep reconfiguring the rooms as new ideas take shape. ‘It will always be evolving,’ he says.

He stresses that this new chapter is less a rupture than a re-centering: ‘My everyday life is the same – I design weird, big, crazy stuff with a lot of light in it. The only difference is that I’ve removed the girl walking on top of it,’ he jokes, referring to his departure from the relentless fashion treadmill. ‘But suddenly, when you remove that girl, then the attention goes towards what I do, and only what I do.’

He is now taking time away from commissions to focus on light sculptures, architectural installations and houses that blur art and design – a deliberate step, he says, towards creative freedom. ‘I don’t want to do events anymore – I think I’ve done more events than anybody on this planet,’ he laughs. What follows, he explains, is not about rejecting that legacy but rediscovering what happens when the brief – and the brand – are removed. ‘I’m going through a moment of uselessness,' he adds, 'more un-practical, more exploratory – and I’m quite enjoying it.’

This evening, the installation opens during Frieze London, with music by Paul Simonon, cuisine by Rose Chalalai Singh and a special cocktail by Space Talk. As guests lose themselves in the Hollywood glow of de Betak’s installation, the experience feels almost allegorical. ‘When you remove the objective of the event,’ he says, ‘you’re a bit more free – but you’re also lost. And that’s interesting. I never had the time to get lost before.’