In the Alpine mountains of Rossinière, the sculptor and jeweler Harumi Klossowska de Rola lives with three wolves, a serval wildcat named Nelson Mandela, and a dog. Her walks in the Swiss wilderness help fulfill her appetite for nature’s mysterious ways, but a home life with animals lays the path to her enigmatic sculptures—psychological interpretations of living creatures. “I observe and draw them, but the works are never direct representations of the animals,” says Klossowska de Rola.
The 48-year-old artist is intrigued by the animal gaze, yet leaves out the eyes when she creates deer, wolves, snakes, and owls in bronze or alabaster: “I am not after grasping a sweet, nice, or aggressive quality—I want to give a whole range of emotions.” Klossowska de Rola does wonder, however, whether visitors to her exhibition “Sacred Woods,” opening today at the Palm Beach outpost of Acquavella Galleries, will remember her sculptures as having eyes. “You may assume a few of them are asleep,” she suggests.
