Of the nine books composed by the poet Sappho (630 B.C.), only one poem has survived in its entirety. The rest, what has come down to us, are fragments, and the poet Anne Carson collects, translates and reinterprets them in a book of disturbing beauty called ‘If not, winter’, where what we read catches us especially for what is sensed behind those verses. 

The artist Jordi Bernadó (Lleida, 1966) is inspired by this title, ‘If not, winter’ in an exhibition that is a double nod to Sappho and Anne Carson to also recover fragments through which he builds a look at a world, ours, in which the ground has begun to crack. And it is from there, from the crack, from where Bernadó traces the elusive beauty through the clues it leaves behind.

In continuous migration towards territories yet to be discovered and occupied, in a moment of loss of common orientation, the human being needs to land somewhere. Even if it is in a question mark that opens up in search of a map of new references and vindicating old ones. But far from wanting to offer certainties, the images that make up ‘If not, tomorrow’ are rather signs that point to the emergence of a new reality, signs united by an invisible thread, a questioning, that orders them.

How do we live? How do we inhabit space? What do we do to find a place that is not a mirage?

This exhibition is born from the need to navigate uncertainty, to know how to interpret silences and signs. Perhaps it is no longer enough to make an inventory of man’s mistakes and it is now convenient to glimpse and map the truths of nature and the exemplarity of people. And perhaps from there, without losing sight of wonder and doubt, we can continue. That everything is ephemeral is also a hypothesis of eternity.

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Jordi Bernadó (Lleida, 1966) is winner of the Fotopress Scholarship, and the Endesa X Scholarship in 2007. His work is part of important public and private art collections such as: Fundación “La Caixa”, Fundación Telefónica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Deusche Bank Collection, Artium, MUSAC, Fundación Vila Casas and Banco Sabadell, among others. 

He has published more than twenty books including Good News always read the fine print (winner of the Laus Award, 1999), Very very bad news (winner of the award for best photography book of Photoespaña 02 and the award for best art book of the Ministry of Culture, 2002), True Loving and other tales (selected as one of the best photography books of Photoespaña 07), Lucky Looks (commission of Banc Sabadell, 2008), Welcome to Espaiñ , 2009, and Europa (on the occasion of the candidacy of Santander as European Capital of Culture, 2010).