…portrait of a bloodied animal against a flat white background. With the exhibition, Red Star hopes to challenge the notion of what exactly constitutes American progress. “When you say progress it’s positive, right? We’re making progress. For me, progress in this context is complicated.” She continued, “It’s contending with more narratives, and it’s pulling out those narratives that are literally being chased off the canvas and analyzing that. It…

…ers, bricks), colored green-screen green, blank for superimposition. Color-calibration charts show up throughout the exhibition: as objects, they have a pop appeal, grids of cyan and yellow and magenta. Used to check and adjust color, they center whiteness in our sense of what makes a picture correct or true. Rogue States, the first thing you see inside the museum, includes flags suspended from the ceiling in rows that turn the atrium into a hall…

Stepping into the Wisch Family Gallery at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University evokes a polar desert’s quiet and dangerous beauty. Centered amidst  large-scale photographs of a pristine white, icy environment, an otherworldly ultramarine-blue sphere measuring slightly over 3 feet in diameter rests on a bed of what appears to be snow. The sphere, representing Rigil Kentaurus, the third-brightest star in the night sky, is a key element o…