Do pilgrims only progress or do they travel backwards too? John Bunyan’s allegory of man’s forward movement towards Zion was taken up as a founding story of travelling to the New World: a religious justification for Europeans’ brutal occupation of America. Yet pilgrimage has since then gone the other way, becoming a search for an authentic self and homeland. Coachloads of white American tourists flock back to Europe in search of roots long since withered. These double meanings of pilgrimage, as locating and dislocating oneself, are mapped out in American artist Emma cc Cook’s new exhibition, inspired by the discovery of her Scottish roots and her ongoing exploration of national identity.  - Public 




























Almine Rech Brussels is pleased to present Resting Point of Accommodation, a group exhibition organized with Bill Powers.

April 21 — May 28, 2021

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.

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 17th 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.   
Do pilgrims only progress or do they travel backwards too? John Bunyan’s allegory of man’s forward movement towards Zion was taken up as a founding story of travelling to the New World: a religious justification for Europeans’ brutal occupation of America. Yet pilgrimage has since then gone the other way, becoming a search for an authentic self and homeland. Coachloads of white American tourists flock back to Europe in search of roots long since withered. These double meanings of pilgrimage, as locating and dislocating oneself, are mapped out in American artist Emma cc Cook’s new exhibition, inspired by the discovery of her Scottish roots and her ongoing exploration of national identity.