Through 03/26 @ The Egg, Albany

“FIREBIRD may not be for everyone. The impatient or the literal may not enjoy themselves. It is not for those who want a quiet placard or a description of what to think of the piece laid out before them. Instead, it is for those who seek something more personal, something more subdermal.”

The Egg sat in the lobby of The Egg. The Egg is a peculiar thing. Ovoid and unavoidable with its glassy red scales that light up like scrutinizing eyes. The Egg speaks, asking you to congregate around it. To hush. To listen. To slow down. To prepare yourself for the journey you will take within the albumen of the brutalist architecture sharing the same name.

Like rings of Saturn, the audience congregates before The Egg, curious. The audience listens. What will the watchful Egg ask of them next?

It asks them to walk.

Swishing silver capes draped over shoulders, attendees murmur to themselves as they float first along the length of the concourse, past canvases already fixed to the walls, asked by the watchful Egg to consider the art as they move.

Then, up the silver-clad wraiths went, up the escalator to the plaza level, March snow dust swirling down upon them. Then they went up even higher, snaking through the claustrophobic staircase in the building’s concrete pedestal, yolky yellow light illuminating the pathway. Whispers and footfalls climbing through the bowels of the building until emerging into the Hart Theater.

The sea of silver shawls then settle comfortably in the auditorium, staring up at a monolith suspended from the ceiling — FIREBIRD — hundreds of tail lights in vibrant reds that had been claimed by visionary hands from rusting junkyards.

The bodies, they settle, waiting expectantly for the wall before them to blaze.

Then, the wall begins to wake.

The audience is captivated by the glowing wall as it pulses, swirls, stretches its wings, undulates and oscillates. It asks the audience — but not in words — what it means and how it feels to give fiery life to something once cast away. Art, reborn.

FIREBIRD. A phoenix.

At least, that’s how I interpreted it.

But what is FIREBIRD?

An excuse for florid prose cast aside, FIREBIRD is an immersive art experience by Dutch artist collective Touki Delphine. The piece, comprised of more than 600 recycled tail lights, brings forth a modern and avant-garde reimagining of Igor Stravinsky’s 1917 composition Firebird Suite. FIREBIRD is not just a single piece laid upon a wall in a gallery to be looked upon passively; it is something that requires attentive consumption.

It begins with Touki Delphine’s piece The Egg (not to be confused with the building The Egg, in which it sat, though that certainly makes this write up more fun and more confusing in equal measure). It is a piece that literally speaks to you, beginning with instructions on how to make the most of the experience: Follow the guides in golden cloaks as they take viewers through the plaza concourse to admire the beautiful (and often underappreciated) displays of public art. The Egg says to listen and look, but don’t speak.

Some did, but their voices quieted as they entered the main part of the exhibition.

The piece in the Hart Theater dwarfs that of the one in the lobby. Instead of several handfuls of lights in an egg shape, it is thousands of individual bulbs choreographed to ignite behind the wall of tail lights as the electronica interpretation of the Russian classic accompanies it.

The music is not merely a duplicate of the original, but a modern interpretation as imagined by the collective of artists and musicians. Instead of strings, the song is alive with synthesizers. Each note creates a burst of light in patterns thoughtfully programmed by the artists.

FIREBIRD is a hypnotizing experience; it is easy to get lost in the magic of the lights, in how they appear to flap and take flight like its namesake after emerging from the dark — the dark of the auditorium around you, the dark where the lights on the piece did not illuminate, and the dark of the world outside the concrete shell.

FIREBIRD may not be for everyone. The impatient or the literal may not enjoy themselves. It is not for those who want a quiet placard or a description of what to think of the piece laid out before them. It is not really for those who find their definition of what they consider art to be limited to the greats of the Renaissance, the deep shadows of Rembrandt or Caravaggio, or the luminist glow of the American Romantics. Instead, it is for those who seek something more personal, something more subdermal; for those who search for meaning in other forms of contemporary or modern art — perhaps for fans of Chihuly, Turrell, Eliasson, or those who favor art with texture that transcends familiar and expected mediums.

FIREBIRD is there to fill in the gaps of your own expectations. It forces the viewer to see the ways in which light, absence, and the malleability of it all, create art. It forces the viewer to reckon with contradictions.

Or, it is just a wall of recycled tail lights.

Only you can sift through the ashes and decipher the meaning.

FIREBIRD is free to the public. The final viewing is at 7:00pm at The Egg on Thursday, March 26th. Tickets may be acquired at The Egg