The following is an excerpt from Carlo McCormick’s catalogue essay for Toyo Tsuchiya’s Invisible Underground exhibition at Howl! Happening.
It is easy to obsess on the infamous and important artists who populate the photographs of Toyo Tsuchiya, to be impressed as we can be when encountering the likes of Tehching Hsieh, Kembra Pfahler, Stelarc, Jackie Curtis or Jack Smith, but they are like cool cameos in a much more complex and radical theatrics. Toyo was never interested in photographing the real art celebrities of New York City cultural capital- and there are tons of excellent photographers from that time if you want to see pictures of Warhol, Basquiat, Haring, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson or the rest of the all too predictable a-list- he was enthralled by the furthest reaches of the avant-garde, the not only less-than-famous but the significantly far from mainstream. Honestly, looking back at these pictures now I can’t recognize so many of the faces as I should, but they are part of a greater recognition of what it meant to be there, at that time, on the desperate edge of a very rough neighborhood, in a place without rules, a club without a guest list, a party without a permit. Yes this is art without license or permission, not meant for the society of the spectacle but for the intimacy of the like-minded.
The world Toyo allows us with 99 Nights, as he did with all his ensuing work at No Se No, the Rivington Sculpture Garden and so many other places that have fallen off the historical map and been paved over by the power of progress (or is that the progress of power), is never the center of things so much as the glorious margins, not the emblematic and iconic moments that comes to define so much else as the interstices that resist definition. These are the nights that turn to days, the spot you don’t find on any tour guide, the local that is wonderfully filled with artists from all over the world, travelers and creative itinerants who came to New York City for the chance to be someplace like no other, for surely it was only there where we could each and all be ourselves. I love these pictures because the limn the indescribable, unfold themselves less a great narratives than special little secrets, talk of something we don’t really know but understand deep in our hearts how much the very existence of this outré universe, and all the parallel dimensions where uninhibited creativity is allowed to run wild, matters to the health and vitality of our culture. Like the long-lapsed scene they inscribe for us these pictures remind us not just who we were but what we might still be. And as great as they are, I’m kind of glad Toyo put down his camera. Those instances when creativity ignites a community are rare and ephemeral, Toyo Tsuchiya saw them and lived them as they mattered, but is not the one to spend his life chasing things that have already moved on. Besides, he’s such an amazing artist now, but perhaps that’s another story we can tell you next time…
Please join us for the opening of Toyo Tsuchiya Invisible Underground, this Friday (11/18) at 6pm, 6 East 1st Street, NYC. The opening will also be live streamed on www.howlarts.org.
