An installation of approximately 300 digital prints (5.75" x 4") taped together in blocks to fill the space of the gallery.
The text above can be found on the backs of all of Toche's digital prints.
Some of the individual cards that were in the show. The above card on the left is a portrait of Toche with his wife, Virginia Toche, who died of cancer in 2000.
Who Are We?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Twenty-five
years ago, when the Nazis fled from Belgium, my native country, after four
years of military occupation, I saw people burning in the streets all over the
country whatever had been German: books, magazines, records, films... Buildings
which had been occupied, or built, by the Germans were dynamited. The Belgians
wanted to erase forever whatever had been part of the Deutschland Kultur.
(Toche, 1969)1
It's not easy being Jean Toche —
at almost eighty he's still waging war against the hypocrisy and stupidity of
our national and political culture. Since the early '90s, from his secure location
in Staten Island, he's been sending out bold, loud and outraged handbills that
contain his responses and suggestions for making things better, and how to keep
the bozos away from the levers of power. An exposer of fraudsters, poseurs, politicians,
hypocrites, government agencies and the art world, Toche started with single
sheets of text that were mailed out to 50 people at a time, then he centralized
this activity in his artists' periodical titled Of Piss @ N' Pus (2002-03), each issue of which contained
hand-signed sheets from a specific month. At the same time Toche acquired both
a new printer, which enabled him to print works up to 10 feet long, and a
digital camera with which he began to create an archive of self-portraits. It
is from this latter collection that he chooses the self-portraits in his now
standard practice of combining digitally manipulated self-portraits with texts
from mass media sources.
Toche also has something of a history of intervening in situations in
order to get his voice and opinion heard. As one of the founding members, with
Jon Hendricks of the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG, 1969-76), they communicated
their views by writing letters & sending handbills of protest to their
adversaries, and sometimes they created actions to draw particular attention to
an issue.2 One celebrated event was the "blood bath" action
that took place on November 10, 1969, in the foyer of the Museum of Modern Art,
in which Hendricks, Toche, Johnson and Silvianna3 staged a fight in
which the bags of blood hidden under their clothes burst and splattered the
participants. The text that was left at the scene demanded the resignation of
all the Rockefellers from the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art
because of their involvement with the 'war machine.'
Four years later the museums would get their revenge. On February 28,
1974, Toche, under the auspices of the 'Ad Hoc Artists' Movement for Freedom,'
sent a handbill to assorted museums, newspapers and individuals in New York
City in which he demanded a number of things, including the kidnapping of
museum "trustees, directors, administrators, curators, &
benefactors," and for them to be held as war hostages until a People's
Court could be convened to "...deal specifically with the cultural crimes
of the ruling class..." Toche, with solidarity from the arts community,
fought the kidnap charges for more than a year before the government dropped
all its charges.
Toche was 12 years old when he witnessed
the events he describes at the beginning of this text, and the powerful image
of Belgium's WWII anti-Nazi purge and the frenzied eradication of all Deutschland Kultur provided a vivid experience
of the power of culture and the culture of power. Since his arrival in the US
in 1965, Toche has waged his own war against a culture he despises, and that's
our culture of political corruption, inequality and discrimination, to name but
a few. However, one thing can be stated with certainty — Toche's fight will be
a fight to the end!4,5,6
Stephen Perkins, 2012
________________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes
1. Jean
Toche, ltr. (Oct. 9, 1969) concerning the 7th Annual Avant Garde Festival, in GAAG: 1969-1976, Printed Matter:
New York, 1978, unpaginated: Introduction.
2. Other
collaborators and members of GAAG, were Virginia Poe (Toche), and Poppy
Johnson.
3.
Silvianna was an artist/filmmaker and participated in this action only, (in GAAG: 1969-1976).
4. This text was for an installation of Toche's works in the
407 Gallery, in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay titled "Who Are We?" from March 5-9, 2012. The show was comprised
of 153 works created
between November 18, 2003 and February 26, 2012.
5. An interesting booklet that includes historical information about Toche's activities and an interview conducted by Temporary Services in 2008 is available through their website: Temporary Services - Non-commercial since 1998
6. Toche passes away in his home, July, 2018.
