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

Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Slow Down Abstractions - Adrien Vescovi
Critique d'art n°56
Télégraphes de l'Utopie – L'art des avant-gardes en Europe Centrale 1918-1939 - Sonia de Puineuf
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Cyclone - Juliette Chalaye
Le vieux père - Laurent Kropf
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Eros negro #2 - Demoniak
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
movement in squares - Stefanie Leinhos
L’Écureuil de James - Alice Brière-Haquet, Liuna Virardi
Le déclin du professeur de tennis - Fabienne Radi
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Anderlecht — Molenbeek - Pierre Blondel
Sights - Henry McCausland
Le Monde en situation - Vanessa Theodoropoulou
ICCMHW - Atelier Choque Le Goff
ARTZINES #1, Paris issue
Après la révolution – numéro 1
Turbo Decompress - Coll.
Hmm ! - C. de Trogoff
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
Jean-Jacques a dit - Angèle Douche
Désolation - Verity Spott
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Pénurie - Zivo, Jérôme Meizoz
Critique d'art n°54
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h 































