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

movement in squares - Stefanie Leinhos
Parataxes + CD - Michael Gendreau
Pour voir, Emscher Park - Gaëtane Lamarche-Vadel
Alma Mater n°1
moj’am al arabeia - Farah Khelil & antoine lefebvre editions
Dark optics - David Claerbout
Rond-point au mammouth - Sur une idée de Veit Stratmann
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Lazy Painter - Angela Gjergjaj, Jordi Bucher and Mirco Petrini
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Après la révolution – numéro 1
Optical Sound 3
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Soleil, eau, vent : vers l'autonomie énergétique - Delphine Bauer
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
本の本の本 - antoine lefebvre editions,
Anarchitecte - Olivier Verdique alias Alvar Le Corvanderpius
Dessins pour Rugir - Virginie Rochetti
9 octobre 1977 - Roberto Varlez
Sans titre - Benjamin Hartmann
Poèmes - Yvonne Rainer
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Télégraphes de l'Utopie – L'art des avant-gardes en Europe Centrale 1918-1939 - Sonia de Puineuf
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Ellipse - Ismail Alaoui-Fdili
Philonimo - Le Chien de Diogène - Alice Brière-Haquet, Kazuko Matt
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
De lave et de fer - Laurent Feynerou
Pureté et impureté de l’art. Michel Journiac et le sida Antoine Idier
Un essai sur la typographie - Eric Gill
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
Holy Mountain - Maia Matches, Knuckles & Notch
Marcel Proust en cinq minutes — Jackson B. Smith
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Shanghai Cosmetic - Leslie Moquin
De tels baisers - Jul Gordon
Blaclywall by Sihab Baik - Claude Closky
Critique d'art n°55
Tools #04 – Couper / To Cut
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
L'arum tacheté de J-M. Bertoyas
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Atopoz - Collectif
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Ilya Ehrenbourg - Et pourtant elle tourne
Ar(t)chitectures situées - Étienne Delprat
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Le vieux père - Laurent Kropf
Jawa Tengah Combo - Fred Maillard
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac 































