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Affinity with animals runs like a thread through the three-dimensional oeuvre of Wim Tap. After his training at the Ateliers '63 in Haarlem, the artist settled in Amsterdam. He became known not only as a sculptor, but also as an abstract painter. Oil paintings, gouaches and collages by his hand can be found in various government collections. In addition, his 1981 design for the rock garden at Artis is well known. This garden fits in perfectly with the romantic character of the capital zoo.

With the rock garden, Tap connects to the animal sculptures of colleagues and contemporaries like Hetty Heyster and Arie Teeuwisse and the sgraffito's of Jan Groenestein. Still, it would be going too far to characterise Tap as an animalier (an artist who depicts animals) who works in the spirit of Auguste-Nicolas Cain. Work by this famous French artist is also included in the Artis collection.

The two stones that were placed in 1985 on the Alexander field at Burgemeester Patijnlaan, show an affinity with the rock garden that Tap created for Artis. In two rough chunks of granite, there is a razor-sharp spiral-shaped fossil imprint reminiscent of shellfish or snail shells. The suggestion that this is an archaic archaeological find is reinforced by the duality of the sculpture. The two separate stone fragments give the impression that they once formed one ancient rock that was split in two by overwhelming natural forces.

In his sculptures, Tap frequently underlines his fascination for sudden natural disasters or steadily proceeding natural processes. The depiction of fossil remains is consistent with this. Animal or vegetable remains are literally preserved under the pressure of nature. Moreover, the spiral imprint in the stones shows that special laws and patterns occur in nature. Repetition, rhythm, symmetry and other phenomena are compressed and preserved in rock-hard granite.