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

Les ratons laveurs - Sophie Couderc
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Philonimo - Le Canard de Wittgenstein - Alice Brière-Haquet, Loïc Gaume
La Colombe de Kant - Alice BRIÈRE-HAQUET / Émilie VAST
Lumières - Guillaume Chauchat
Autodrône - Divine Vizion
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Sex I - Kingué Camille
Wayfaring - Patrick Messina, André S. Labarthe
Oblikvaj 4 - Last minute Shodo - Thomas Perrodin, Ensemble Batida
The Shelf - Journal 3
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
La chasse Galerine - Jéréméy Piningre & Aëla Maï Cabel
Der Erste Rotkehlchen - Le livre
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Optical Sound 2
De lave et de fer - Laurent Feynerou
Rocher du Ciel - Martin Desinde
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Bambi # 4 - Collectif
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Flower finds - Orianne Jeanselme
Critique d'art n°55
Les Grands Ensembles - Léo Guy-Denarcy
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Sur la page, abandonnés — vol.3
Poétique d'une introspection visuelle - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis, Alex Barbier
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Shanghai Cosmetic - Leslie Moquin
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Philonimo - Le Loup de Hobbes - Alice Brière-Haquet, Herbéra
Deep state - Mathieu Desjardins
Génération dakou - Yann Jun + CD
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Le lacéré anonyme - Jacques Villeglé
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
replis de l’anthélix - Rachel Sassi
Le singe et le bijoux - Roxane Lumeret
Gnose & Gnose & Gnose - Aymeric Vergnon-d'Alençon 































