Horseshoe crab
The horseshoe crab has been an object of fascination for Vincent Mock since childhood. Fossil records have shown that the physical structure of the horseshoe crab has remained unchanged for roughly 450 million years, bringing our early origins into question once again. This characteristic makes the horseshoe crab one of the oldest living fossils.
By creating an oversized pink velvet sculpture, Mock questions what makes a species so successful over a vast time span as well as how certain organisms can survive the world's greatest cataclysms and mass extinctions.
He poses the question: what can we learn from the horseshoe crab and what can we take from it to more easily adapt to environmental change? How do we need to transform ourselves to avoid our own destruction as a species?
2014, Velvet/Flock, Polyester Resin, 260 x 140 x 60 cm.
The pink velvet facade of the horseshoe crab sculpture give it a delicate and feminine touch, yet the spiny structure of the animal simultaneously give it a peculiar and somewhat alien look, like a creature that has come from deep below the ocean's surface. Mystifying as it may look at first, the sculpture intends to bring to light the sheer beauty and complexity of the horseshoe crab, and bring to light the evolutionary success of this animal.