Blue State explores the invention of “blueness” through various historical narratives, examining the role of the color as a catalyst for geographic and technological discovery. Once the essence that inspired scientific pilgrimage, blueness is now itself a geographic measuring instrument, serving as a shorthand to map political constituencies across the American landscape. District by district, blueness blankets a matrix of values under a single shade of establishment liberalism. A desire for exactness, for natural blueness rich in detail and meaning, has given way to its opposite: blueness as projection, a tool of blurring and false ascription. Blue acts not as an organizing principle but as an organizing force, one that points us at once to the paradoxes of discovery and repression, of global apocrypha and intimate secrets, of the joy of nature and its dissolution into the ether. Featured artists include: Cameron Crone, Cynthia Daignault, Paul Kremer, Divya Mehra, Monique Mouton, Elizabeth Marcus-Sonenberg, and Elise Rasmussen. Blue State will be on view through April 14 at Night Gallery 2276 E 16th Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock