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

fig. #6 - antithèse
16 x 421 - Lorraine Druon
La mémoire en acte - Quarente ans de création musicale
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Assembly - Sam Porritt
Salt Crystal - Fabio Parizzi
Dans la Lune - Fanette Mellier
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
La France de tête - Lot de 4 numéros
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Promenade au pays de l'écriture - Armando Petrucci
12345678 - Maya Strobbe
Le déclin du professeur de tennis - Fabienne Radi
Eros negro n°3 - Démoniak
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
All Wet - Maryin Winter
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Inframince et hyperlié - Philippe Lipcare
Critique d'art n°56
10 MINUTES Architects and Designers in Conversation
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Dialogue de dessins 7 - Jochen Gerner, Guillaume Chauchat
Alma Mater n°1
Poèmes - Yvonne Rainer
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
ARTZINES #1, Paris issue
OKATAOKA MEETS FOLK ART SERIES “HELLO MEXICO”
Crise de foie - Christine Demias
Pour voir, Emscher Park - Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
UP8 — Pour une pédagogie de l'architecture
Trous gris - Michel Vachey
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Party Studies – Vol. 2 – Underground clubs, parallel structures and second cultures
Marginalia - Clément Laigle
La troisième oreille et autres textes + CD - Bryan Lewis Saunders
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
Lazy Painter - Angela Gjergjaj, Jordi Bucher and Mirco Petrini
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin 































