Last year this May, the entire USC MFA first year class dropped out due to a forced renegotiation of their recruitment terms set forth by Roski administrators. (We covered this via our colleagues at Art&Education here.) Now, the first year Roski MFAs who withdrew are collaborating as a collective called MFA no MFA, and will show at a new LA gallery called PSSST. Carolina Miranda has the story, in partial below, the full version via LA Times.
As the Los Angeles art world’s center of gravity has continued to migrate eastward, a growing number of art spaces has begun to open up shop on the eastern banks of the Los Angeles River. Now those spaces are about to be joined by a new artist-run nonprofit with high-minded ambitions.
Pssst, as the new space is called, is scheduled to open its doors in a converted warehouse next month with a program that leans toward the experimental — including a show of work by the MFA students who withdrew in protest from USC almost one year ago. (The group now goes by the moniker MFA no MFA.)
Also in the pipeline are lectures, performances and group shows, as well as artist residencies. In fact, the first resident will be Guadalupe Rosales, the Los Angeles artist who has made a name for herself by creating a digital archive of Chicano youth culture of the '90s with her “Veteranas and Rucas” Instagram feed.
Pssst, which will be housed in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in Boyle Heights, is the brainchild of L.A.-based artists Jules Gimbrone and Barnett Cohen. The pair met as students at the California Institute of the Arts, and it was their experience there, in part, that led them to launch their new nonprofit.
“We were imbued with the philosophy and mission of being this really experimental space where artists have time to take risks and collaborate and focus on ideas,” says Gimbrone.
*Image via MFA no MFA’s Tumblr