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

Machiavel chez les babouins - Tim Ingold
interférence - 3 - maycec
Architecture-Belvédère - Lou-Andréa Lassalle & Bérénice Béguerie
Anarchitecte - Olivier Verdique alias Alvar Le Corvanderpius
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Bacon le Cannibale - Perrine Le Querrec
Le lacéré anonyme - Jacques Villeglé
The Shelf - Journal 3
Retour d'y voir - n° 1 & 2 - Mamco
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Jardín de mi padre - Luis Carlos Tovar
Éclats III - Athanor
Mökki n°2
Piotr - Pierre Escot, Denis Lavant
Critique d'art n°55
Comic Book (Untitled) - Stéphanie Leinhos
Cruiser l'utopie – L'après et ailleurs de l'advenir queer - José Esteban Muñoz
Poétique d'une introspection visuelle - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis, Alex Barbier
Manifeste d'intérieurs ; penser dans les médias élargis - Javier Fernández Contreras
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Promenade au pays de l'écriture - Armando Petrucci
Citrus maxima xparadisi - coll.
Tomber dans l'escalier - Jasper Sebastian Stürup
Link Human / Robot - Collectif dir. Emmanuelle Grangier
Les soleils qui tournent ont des oreilles - coll.
Watch out - Anne-Émilie-Philippe
Catalogue Art Guys - That's painting productions, Bernard Brunon
Lili, la rozell et le marimba / revue n°2
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
La construction - Perrine Le Querrec
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
Woman Journal Vol. 4 - Outils d'Émancipation (Tools for Emancipation)
Zombie Girls 2.0 - Lucie Lučanská
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Collage - Laura McMorrow
Télégraphes de l'Utopie – L'art des avant-gardes en Europe Centrale 1918-1939 - Sonia de Puineuf
Critique d'art n°54
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
L'inventaire des destructions - Éric Watier
Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement - Helen Thorington
Klima Pages #2 — Somptueuses Résidences
Anthologie Douteuses (2010—2020) - Élodie Petit & Marguerin Le Louvier
People Painting - Fabienne Radi
Marcel Proust en cinq minutes — Jackson B. Smith
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Burning Images, A History of Effigy Protests - Florian Göttke
Eurob0ys Crysis - Massimiliano Bomba, Leon Sadler, Yannick Val Gesto
Heads Together – Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate - David Jacob Kramer
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Objets Minces - Collectif
How Many - Nathalie Du Pasquier
Oblikvaj 5 - Vingt-deux plongées profondes - Aude Barrio, Ensemble Batida
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
Alma Mater n°1
Rupture (fragments) - Benjamin Monti, Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis
Dear Paul - Paul Van der Eerden
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel 































