THE COLLECTIONS
Hooked On Life is Vincent Mock’s signature body of work: a sculptural series that transforms thousands of stainless steel longline fishhooks into life-sized ocean species, turning tools of extraction into monuments of admiration and warning. Each artwork captures the beauty and power of marine life while confronting the invisible violence of industrial fishing, bycatch, and the fragile balance between humanity and the sea. The series includes iconic predators and ocean giants such as the Great Hammerhead Shark (up to 5 meters), Great White Shark, mako and dusky sharks, as well as endangered migrators like the Leatherback Turtle and the Whale Shark. Even the manta rays, suspended like living spacecraft, invite viewers to look upward and reflect on the oceans as a shared, vulnerable life-support system. Some works originated from direct confrontation with illegal longline fishing, where hooks intended for tuna also trap sharks and seabirds, revealing the true cost of “efficiency.” Hooked On Life is ultimately a call to shift from domination to stewardship, using art to make marine conservation urgent, emotional, and impossible to ignore.
The Plankton project reveals a hidden world that normally escapes our senses, transforming microscopic marine organisms into sculptures that can be seen, experienced, and understood at human scale. Created in collaboration with the GeoSciences Department of the University of Fribourg, the works are based on real planktonic, one-celled life forms captured through advanced nano-scanning and scientific imaging.
Inspired by Ernst Haeckel’s Artforms in Nature, the project brings these iconic natural structures into three dimensions for the first time, combining science with contemporary art. Beyond their astonishing beauty, plankton plays a vital role in life on Earth, shaping ocean ecosystems and helping scientists understand climate change, pollution, and deep geological time. The series has evolved from 3D prints and bronze casts into luminous light objects, allowing these delicate forms to not only be seen, but to illuminate the spaces around them. Plankton is a tribute to the wilderness we still have and a reminder that even the smallest organisms carry enormous importance for the future of our planet.
The Kauyumari project is a collaboration between Vincent Mock and the Huichol (Wixárika) people of Mexico, centered on spirituality, craftsmanship, and the preservation of indigenous culture. Inspired by Huichol cosmology, the series takes its name from Kauyumari, the sacred deer spirit guide who leads shamans on their visionary journeys and embodies the connection between people, land, and knowledge. Naturally shed antlers from red deer become the canvas for intricate glass beadwork, applied bead by bead using traditional Huichol techniques and sacred motifs inspired by peyote visions. The artworks merge ancient symbolism with contemporary art, bridging the modern Western world with one of the world’s oldest living cultures. At its core, the project draws attention to the ongoing threat of cultural extinction, as indigenous communities face increasing pressure from external forces that endanger their sacred lands and traditions. Kauyumari is both a visual celebration and a call for awareness, reminding us that ancient wisdom and harmony with nature remain deeply relevant today.
A New Paradigm is a sculptural project by Vincent Mock that confronts the accelerating collapse of biodiversity and the devastating impact of wildlife poaching. At its center are real rhinoceros skulls, transformed into artworks that carry both presence and absence: a physical reminder of what is being lost. The project includes engravings of a passage from the Tao Te Ching (道德经), a text that reflects on harmony with nature and the consequences of human interference. By placing this ancient message onto the remains of an animal pushed toward extinction, the work connects spiritual wisdom with a modern ecological crisis.
A New Paradigm asks viewers to reconsider value, not as a commodity extracted from nature, but as a responsibility toward what cannot be replaced. It is both a memorial and a call to shift our relationship with the living world before more species disappear.
Alongside his major sculptural collections, Vincent Mock has developed a broader body of experimental works that span multiple years and scales. These projects function as laboratories of thought, moving freely between dioramas, scientific structures, and nature forms. Drawing on fields such as biology, ecology, and consciousness research, Mock explores how life organizes itself, persists through time, and leaves traces of meaning.
Together, these works reveal an ongoing inquiry rather than a fixed series: a practice that shifts between the microscopic and the planetary, the ancient and the future-oriented, the material and the immaterial. They form a connective tissue within his oeuvre, where experimentation, research, and imagination intersect to question how humans understand nature, reality, and their own place within complex living systems.