Wendy Red Star’s “False Stars” at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles: Taking the Star Quilt Apart

Start with a thought experiment. Take a Star Quilt, remove the fabric, remove the stitching, remove the batting — how much can you strip away before the star stops being a star? That is the question at the heart of Wendy Red Star’s “False Stars” at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, a solo exhibition running from 7 November to 19 December 2026. The answer, as the works suggest, depends on where you stand.

Who is Wendy Red Star?

Red Star was born in Billings, Montana, in 1981 and grew up on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation; she belongs to the Piegan clan of the Pryor district and is now based in Portland, Oregon. She studied at Montana State University in Bozeman before taking an MFA in sculpture at UCLA — a Los Angeles connection that gives this show a quiet sense of return. Her first career survey, A Scratch on the Earth, opened at the Newark Museum in 2019. In 2024 she received a MacArthur Fellowship, as well as the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship and an Infinity Award, and in 2025 Montana State awarded her an honorary doctorate. A major presentation, Whispering Spirit, is scheduled for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery from April 2027.

Across photography, sculpture, fibre and works on paper, Red Star has long examined how Native American culture is represented — and misrepresented — in archives, museums and popular imagery, often with sharp humour. “False Stars” turns that critical eye on a single form from within her own community’s material culture.

The Star Quilt as a structure

Among Plains peoples, the Star Quilt carries great weight: it is given to honour people at key moments of life. Its eight-pointed star is built from many small diamonds, carefully pieced so that they radiate from a centre. Red Star keeps that geometric skeleton but largely abandons the textile. According to the gallery, the title refers to a star formation that people mistakenly read as a complete star — an apt name for a body of work about perception and partial information.

Pigment, mirrors and beads

In two corner installations, mounds of coloured earth pigment are laid on the floor as the diamond segments of a partial star. Mirrors set at ninety degrees to one another reflect the pigment and visually complete the figure. Two freestanding mirror sculptures repeat the trick with thousands of solid-coloured acrylic beads, so the pattern resolves, fractures and re-forms as visitors walk around it. The press release ties the mirror works to a technique used in quilting instruction and also to Robert Smithson’s mirror displacements — a nod to land art that sits interestingly beside the use of earth as a medium.

The works on paper move in the opposite direction, toward the handmade. Japanese Sumi paper is soaked in watercolour, cut into diamonds, folded and assembled into stars, then loosely attached to sheets of Rives BFK painted in opaque gouache. Star Field 001 (2026), used as our cover image, belongs to this group.

Roberts Projects and La Brea

Roberts Projects, on South La Brea Avenue in Mid-Wilshire, has represented Red Star for several years and is known for a programme that pairs established figures with artists working through questions of identity and history. Its location makes it an easy stop alongside the cluster of galleries on La Brea and the museums of nearby Miracle Mile.

Why it matters

The gallery stresses that the exhibition is “less concerned with recreating the Star Quilt” than with testing what its structure can withstand. That makes “False Stars” more than a homage. It is a study of how cultural forms survive translation into new materials — a question that matters as much to Indigenous communities as it does to any artist working with inherited forms. For collectors, the show offers new sculpture and works on paper by an artist at a clear institutional peak, between a MacArthur and a Smithsonian exhibition. For painters and designers, it is a masterclass in how geometry, colour and reflection can construct an image that exists only in the viewer’s eye.

Visiting information

Roberts Projects, 442 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036. 7 November – 19 December 2026; opening reception Saturday 7 November, 5–7pm. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–6pm (please confirm with the gallery). Phone +1 323 549 0223, email [email protected]. See our Wendy Red Star: False Stars listing, the official Roberts Projects exhibition page, and more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.