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

Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Ventoline 5 - Coll.
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Der Erste Rotkehlchen - Le livre
Optical Sound 3
Autodrône - Divine Vizion
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Cruiser l'utopie – L'après et ailleurs de l'advenir queer - José Esteban Muñoz
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Grilles - Zelda Mauger
Hérésie Étiologique - coll.
A l'origine - Anne-Émilie-Philippe
Rasclose - Geoffroy Mathieu
La peinture c'est comme les pépites - Pierre Yves-Hélou + Tirage
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Karbone Magazine n°8 - Parasite
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
Crise de foie - Christine Demias
Catalogue Art Guys - That's painting productions, Bernard Brunon
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Tempête après tempête - Rebekka Deubner
Vases Communicants - Hélène Drénou
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Deep state - Mathieu Desjardins
La prise - Florian Javet
Rue Englelab, La révolution par les livres - Iran 1979 - 1983 - Hannah Darabi
SKKS - Gilles Pourtier
Tanière de lune - Maria-Mercé Marçal
The Shelf - Journal 3
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement - Helen Thorington
Anthologie Douteuses (2010—2020) - Élodie Petit & Marguerin Le Louvier
L'abécédaire d'un typographe - Gerrit Noordzij; Jost Hochuli
Les glaciers - Lorraine Druon
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Rupture (fragments) - Benjamin Monti, Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Hobo Nickel - Damien Sauvage
Je ne peux pas ne pas - Geneviève Romang
La traversée - Magali Brueder 































