For more than three decades, Alexandre de Betak has shaped the visual language of fashion shows and large-scale events. With TRUSS LIGHT SCULPTURES 01, his first sculpture exhibition at New York’s Salon 94 Design, he shifts attention to the often-overlooked machinery behind the spectacle. On view from November 5th to December 19th, 2026, twelve works recast industrial trusses and stage lights as monumental sculptural objects, challenging the boundaries between function and form, transience and permanence.
From backstage apparatus to sculptural presence
Occupying two rooms in Salon 94 Design’s historic Upper East Side townhouse, the exhibition offers contrasting interpretations of stage architecture. In the contemporary gallery, aluminium trusses and stage lights form large-scale freestanding and wall-mounted compositions. Their industrial geometry is accentuated by bespoke lighting sequences, with fixtures appearing to direct their gaze towards visitors or pulse to carefully programmed rhythms.
The adjoining Beaux-Arts Stone Room features bronze versions of the same structures. Cast at a French foundry through a laborious process involving more than twenty moulds per sculpture, the works acquire the weight and permanence of traditional monuments. The contrast between raw aluminium and polished bronze reveals how radically material can alter an object’s character.
Prismatic glass and individually programmed illumination feature throughout the series. Light shifts between steady glows, rhythmic pulses and shimmering effects, with selected sculptures responding to sound. Here, illumination becomes an integral part of the sculptural composition.
A different kind of spectacle
The exhibition follows de Betak’s ongoing experiments with light and architecture. In 2025, his London studio became an expansive installation of light and mirrors for Frieze London, followed in early 2026 by a site-specific work inside a traditional Swiss barn during Gstaad Art Week.
The New York show marks his first collaboration with Salon 94 Design founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. She describes the illuminated sculptures as theatrical performers, while their unlit counterparts reveal an architectural monumentality reminiscent of Vladimir Tatlin and David Smith. The exhibition offers an unexpected reversal for an artist whose career has largely involved concealing the technical structures behind the spectacle.
The project also carries personal significance: it is de Betak’s first solo sculpture exhibition in New York, where he lived for more than twenty years and developed his international practice. Having spent decades disguising the trusses and lights essential to his productions, he now places these once-hidden structures at eye level, granting them the attention they rarely received.
