Born out of a reflection on the nature of images and their nocturnal vocation, Better in the Dark than His Rider is both a fable and a survival guide. The collected work by Francesco Merlini spans different years, possibly quite distant from one other; shot in all four continents, his pictures reveal the unique perspective of someone who, like a sleepwalker guided by ghosts, seeks for something nameless. The title is drawn, almost literally, from a 19th century manual of optics. The original sentence – “[…] much better in the dark than his rider” – refers to a horse’s night vision compared to a human’s.
The selected sequence of pictures unravels around the transitional stage between wakefulness and sleep, engaging with hypnagogia as a sensory yet dreamlike mode of semiconscious representation. Images make up mind’s psychic contents. If in dreams self-consciousness is suspended and images look real to the extent that we are sleeping, when dozing we can consciously guide them because partially aware that we are dreaming. Stated otherwise, in lucid dreams we know we are faced with the contents of our imagination, whose edges appear hallucinatory. Dreaming is a perpetual state we do experience both asleep and awake. Thanks to imagination, the dream matter turns into the mind’s real object again.

23,5×31 cm
Hard cover with embossing
Offset UV
80 pages
Paper:
Munken Lynx Rough 150 g/m²
Fedrigoni Sirio Nero 140 g/m²
Wibalin Natural Petal

Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Yerevan 1996/1997 - Ursula Schulz-Dornburg
Lazy Painter - Angela Gjergjaj, Jordi Bucher and Mirco Petrini
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
ADBC du Dessin - Jacques Floret
Artzines #12 Provo Special
Critique d'art n°56
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Le 6b Saint-Denis, dans un tiers-lieu culturel
16 x 421 - Lorraine Druon
Paysageur n°3 - Mobiles
il y avait une ville - Laeticia L'Heureux
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Pour une esthétique de l'émancipation - Isabelle Alfonsi
Zoom Age - Julien Auregan
Planning - Pierre Escot
Jérôme LeGlatin (avec Mel Crawford) - Le Crash
Le lacéré anonyme - Jacques Villeglé
Les Grands Ensembles - Léo Guy-Denarcy
Économies silencieuses et audaces approximatives - Guy Chevalier [& coll.]
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
Mökki n°2
Copy This Book - Eric Schrijver
Carnivore - Grow
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Aube - Caroline Bachmann
Polygone n°01 - Amour - Collectif
Rupture (fragments) - Benjamin Monti, Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
S ! Imperfect shapes, #38 - Baltic Comics Magazine
Do insects play ? - Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck
Amos Gitai et l'enjeu des archives - Jean-Michel Frodon
Prendre l’image, Le graphisme comme situation politique - Olivier Huz
Birds - Damien Poulain
Autodrône - Divine Vizion
Publication Revue N°1
Eros negro n°3 - Démoniak
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Poster Photo Magazine n°1
Le laboratoire de fermentation - Ludovic Burel
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Femme, Arabe et... Cinéaste - Heiny Srour
Comment quitter la terre ? - Jill Gasparina, Christophe Kihm, Anne-Lyse Renon
Un cahier - Michel Quarez
The Book Fight - Chihoi
Citrus maxima xparadisi - coll.
movement in squares - Stefanie Leinhos
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve 































