Kenneth Wilkes has been producing handmade books for decades. In conjunction with the SF Art Book Fair, Bass & Reiner presents his exhibition In-Between, a handful of books that contain difficult, unsettled, and unsettling images that also intend to provoke the process of greater understanding.

Kenneth Wilkes lives in a house in the woods. There’s a pond with fishing line strung taut across it, ironically to protect the fish inside. Barely perceivable to us, hawks spot the flight hazard and choose easier meals. The works in this show have nothing to do with the intervention at the pond but they contain a similar delicate thoughtfulness owing to the time they’ve spent in the woods, the type of time that passes more slowly as you notice it and seems to repeat periodically. The images are old and were originally made for different purposes but Kenneth’s been reusing and re-imbuing them for years, like a tool that gets a new task or handle long after being placed into service. It makes perfect sense that they end up as books; structures so familiar with multiples, reprints, and revised editions. But it’s the toughness of the images that allows them to be formed and reformed in this way without falling apart.

Bass & Reiner