Exhibition "Vestigia Naturae by Harumi Klossowska de Rola" (Tokyo)

After “Retour d’expédition” presented in Paris in 2017, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts is proud to exhibit the works of Harumi Klossowska de Rola for a second time. Vestigia Naturae features jewelry, objects and furniture from an imaginary world between Europe and Japan, at the crossroads of cultures and continents. The creatures in wood and gold that the public is invited to discover are the denizens of a poetical realm peopled by crocodiles and lions, fireflies and butterflies, monkeys and snakes. Art is the door through which Harumi explores this realm and gives it a narrative. The artist combines materials with unique talent: gold, ebony, myrtle wood, cow horn, fire opals, diamonds, sapphires, garnets, amethysts, peridots and citrines. In her desire to embrace the world in its entirety, Harumi combines wild and delicate nature, mysterious and familiar beings, minuscule and immense creatures, motionless and moving animals.

The creatures in wood and gold that the public is invited to discover are the denizens of a poetical realm peopled by crocodiles and lions, fireflies and butterflies, monkeys and snakes. Art is the door through which Harumi explores this realm and gives it a narrative. The artist combines materials with unique talent: gold, ebony, myrtle wood, cow horn, fire opals, diamonds, sapphires, garnets, amethysts, peridots and citrines. In her desire to embrace the world in its entirety, Harumi combines wild and delicate nature, mysterious and familiar beings, minuscule and immense creatures, motionless and moving animals.

Curiosity is the word that seems most apt to evoke the artistic and cultural lineage of Harumi’s work, and her highly personal way of bringing together the senses and the spirit, like the very principle of the Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. These Wunderkammer contributed greatly to shaping European culture from the 16th century onwards, and allowed a vibrant humanism to flourish. In their own way, these Wunderkammer provided a reason to travel the world, to map it, to know it with confidence, as it emerged gradually from disquieting fantasies and mysteries. How can we not place Harumi’s works in this context, which is far more exciting, and more legitimate too, than a simple inventory of flowers or animals? Harumi follows in the footsteps of those enquiring minds of the 16th and 17th centuries, collecting objects as they pinned butterflies or catalogued seashells in their cabinets, naming them, describing them, and thereby recomposing the vast saga of the World, as much in its ever more detailed geography as in its dizzying chronology.