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

Notre condition. Essai sur le salaire au travail artistique – Aurélien Catin
Comment quitter la terre ? - Jill Gasparina, Christophe Kihm, Anne-Lyse Renon
Poétique d'une introspection visuelle - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis, Alex Barbier
François Morellet - 5 x 3 - François Morellet, Serge Lemoine, Frédéric Valabrègue
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Un cahier - Michel Quarez
Image Canoë - Jérémie Gindre
All Wet - Maryin Winter
WREK The Algorithm! - Aarnoud Rommens, Olivier Deprez
Marcel Proust en cinq minutes — Jackson B. Smith
Hérésie Étiologique - coll.
Rupture (fragments) - Benjamin Monti, Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Anthologie Douteuses (2010—2020) - Élodie Petit & Marguerin Le Louvier
Talweg 6 - La distance
Aristide n°4
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Prose postérieure - Les commissaires anonymes
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Denver Mosaic 1961 - René Heyvaert
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Le déclin du professeur de tennis - Fabienne Radi
Blaclywall by Sihab Baik - Claude Closky
Rois de la forêt - Alain Garlan
Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
Eldorado maximum - Les commissaires anonymes
Tchat - Gary Colin
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Pas vu Pas pris - Collectif, Olivier Deloignon, Guillaume Dégé
Citrus maxima xparadisi - coll.
Mosaïque d'asphalte - Jack Torrance
Bacon le Cannibale - Perrine Le Querrec
La traversée - Magali Brueder 































