GROUP EXHIBITION

Resting Point of Accommodation is an optical term for the visual distance eyes settle on when the viewer lets them drift out of focus, almost like a default setting. It’s a physical state prevalent amongst daydreamers where all vision becomes a type of peripheral perspective. The blending of science with a more lyrical interpretation calls to mind Thomas Aquanis’s notion of poetic knowledge, a sense of lovely bewilderment about the world. Through this lens artists were invited to participate in the group show. The extrapolations upon this theme are meant to be the faintest of breadcrumbs.

With a wink toward sensory disruption, Ana Benaroya’s Don’t Be Cruel gives us double vision in the tradition of Warhol’s iconic Elvis portrait. Mike Lee employs the perfume of animation graphics for his meticulously detailed oil paintings as if to say our dream life could simply be a metaphysical Xbox lit divine. Umar Rashid tackles a complicated remix of colonialist aggressions with aplomb and an unexpected romance. Jesse Mockrin concentrates on the very act of looking in her take on a 17^th century painting by Gerrit van Honthorst.

Like the paintings themselves, we examine a person’s outer coil hoping for clues as to what transpires below the surface. In the throes of a daydream our countenance may take on a glazed or even varnished look when all any of us want is to live alla prima.

—Bill Powers

This is the fifth group exhibition organised by Bill Powers for Almine Rech, starting with Cliche in the summer of 2018 in New York and more recently Chorus in Novermber of 2019 in Paris.

The exhibition feature works by Ana Benaroya, Emma cc Cook, Leyla Faye, Geoff McFetridge, Kathia St Hilaire, Asif Hoque, Mike Lee, Che Lovelace, Jesse Mockrin, Alina Perez, Ted Pim, Umar Rashid, Hiba Schahbaz, Emma Stern and Hiejin Yoo.

Text by Bill Powers. Courtesy Almine Rech.