Mark Van Yetter “You can observe a lot by just watching”

Bridget Donahue

[Image: Mark Van Yetter "for the sophisticated theater goer" (2017) oil on paper, 17 × 14 in.]

This event has ended.

What we are used to is always preferable to what is unfamiliar. (Moderately disagree)

That evening, Arthur read a book he had borrowed from the public library on deep sea exploration. It had a section of colored photographs, some of phosphorescent animalcules which had always fascinated Arthur. A group of scientists had dived in something like a glass submarine off the Galapagos Islands and discovered geysers of unusually warm water at great depth. The warmth of the water had enabled huge worms and foot-wide red clams to live down there, all of the life forms having adapted themselves to the terrific pressure, so that now they never came even halfway to the surface. Arthur wondered if he would ever make it to a ship like the one the book described, to be one of a team of scientists diving in glass bells to look at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?
I would like to live in a foreign country for a while. (Strongly agree)

The deep sea book was the only thing that kept his thoughts from Maggie that evening. Usually he loved daydreaming about
her, but now anxiety seized him when he thought of her. Something could go wrong, and she could die. It is more fun to tackle a complicated problem than to solve a simple one. (Slightly disagree)

By 10 the next morning, Arthur was at Mrs. DeWitt’s. Her pink and yellow roses were in bloom in newly cleared beds. A big apple tree stump remained in the center of the backyard lawn, and Mrs. DeWitt had said she wanted it removed, but Arthur had dodged the task, because the two foot wide stump would take an electric saw and a tractor to get out.

In the long run it is possible to get more done by tackling small, simple problems rather than large and complicated ones. (Moderately agree)
Arthur was inspired to tackle the toolshed for the second time, and to sort out what was usable and what wasn’t. There was an old frame barely recognizable as that of a bicycle, dried-up cans of paint, empty glass jars, and old rags full of spider webs. Arthur amassed a heap on the lawn.

Mrs. DeWitt came out with a bottle of cold ginger ale for him. “That’s a step in the right direction,” she said, meaning the heap of junk. “I’ll speak to the garbage man, give him a tip, and he can carry that off.” Arthur was working without his shirt. Sweat ran down his sideburns and his neck. “Thank you ma’am,” said Arthur, taking the ginger ale bottle.
Teachers or supervisors who hand out vague assignments give one a chance to show initiative and originality. (Neither agree nor disagree)

Mrs. Dewitt suddenly reminded him of a striped mattress. Today her bulk was shrouded in a blue and white striped dress, plain as a nightgown; she wore house-slippers on her bare feet, and her white hair looked as if she hadn’t touched it since she got out of bed.

“Have some lunch with me today, if you’d like to, Arthur. Got some cold fried chicken and potato salad. Ice cream, too.”
That sounded rather good, worth putting up with the cat smell for. Then he could work another hour or so in the afternoon. “Nice of you. I’ll say yes.”
Text by Colin Whitaker

Mark Van Yetter (b. 1978) lives and works in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. Van Yetter co-founded exhibition space Marquise Dance Hall in 2007-2015, which started as a book and record store in New York, before transitioning to an itinerant gallery in Istanbul. Upcoming, Van Yetter will present a solo exhibition ‘Drawings 2005 - 2018: 20 Propositions’ at Salzburger Kunstverein in Austria. Selected previous solo and two-person exhibitions include: ‘The Terrifying Abyss of Skepticism,’ Bridget Donahue, New York; ‘We are what we walk between,’ Micky Schubert, Berlin; ‘Mark Van Yetter: The mere knowledge of a fact is pale,’ Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger Norway; ‘Meek Commandments,’ VI, VII, Oslo, Norway; ‘Dismal Plight,’ with Jonas Lipps, Cleopatra’s, New York; ‘Class Action,’ PlazaPlaza, London; ‘Perceptual Vigilance,’ Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin; Mark van Yetter, Alex Zachary, New York and ‘Intolerance To Contemporary Life,’ HOTEL, London.