Artist's Choice Show @ MoMA's

The Artist's Choice Show @ MoMA is an annual show where an artist is chosen to select from MoMA's archives, whatever they deem for an exhibit.  This year's artist is Trish Donnelly, a performance artist known for working with video, photos & sound art.  This exhibit is dispersed on 2 floors in 3 separate galleries.  The 4th floor gallery consists mainly of microchip designs on paper attributed to various corporations, not individual artists. These works are happenstance stemming from technology.  Some of these designs are aesthetically pleasing.  Donnelly described these pieces as a "type of dimensional mental transit.  They are artifacts of the origins of the Universe."  The gallery displays a motley collection of outdated objects juxtaposed with contemporary technology in a compact fashion.  The 2nd gallery on the 5th floor is dominated in the center by what appears to be a life raft, a staircase to nowhere, a large oil painting of a sightless  face by De Dominicis entitled "No!" and Vicent Van Gogh's sketch "Sorrow."  There are a series of black & white photos of wave patterns and solitary, fallen tree trunks.  Pyramid structures were a recurring fixture in both these galleries.  Donnelly was quoted, "We are running out of time." I felt a pervasive sense of gloom & doom in this room.  The 3rd gallery is comprised solely of nature photos by Eliot Porter of birds.  Birds caught mid-flight, in natural habitats &  feeding their chicks, mouths agape.  Donnelly's selections were works she felt "were necessary to her."  The Artist's Choice Show's are fascinating.  You see through the eyes & of an artist viewing other artist's works.  I find it intriguing trying to discern any theme or message from the artist's selections.  Donnelly may have been thinking, "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got til it's gone."