Skip to content
Menu Close
Close
Tobias Exhibition Card Image Courtesy the artist
  • Art

Jennifer Tobias: Fish Tank

When
All Day
Where
Glyndor Gallery
Tobias Exhibition Card Image Courtesy the artist
Jennifer Tobias, "Fish Tank" (detail), 2025, corrugated cardboard. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

In the Sun Porch installation Fish Tank, Jennifer Tobias draws on Wave Hill’s history, particularly the legacy of Bashford Dean (1867–1928), an American polymath who specialized in ichthyology and medieval and modern armor. Dean lived at Wave Hill House from 1909 to 1928 and built Armor Hall to display his extensive armor collection. 

Tobias suspends corrugated cardboard figures that merge animal and armor forms, evoking an aquarium, diorama, or museum display. Helmets and body armor echo Dean’s prototypes, fused with the bony plating of fossilized fish. A pig-headed fish references a sculpture from the 1920 Berlin Dada exhibition critiquing World War I violence. Made from tree pulp, the cardboard nods to both protection and impermanence. And nearby in the gardens, Atlas poppies (Papaver atlanticum) recall the wild poppies that bloomed on WWI battlefields. Together, these elements suggest fragility and resilience in the face of natural and human-made threats—a resonant metaphor for our era of compounding crises. 

Saturday, August 2, 1:15PM, Meet the Artist: Conversation with the artist and Corrugated Cardboard Bird Feeder Workshop.

Organized by Curator of Visual Arts Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, the Sunroom Project Space is an open call opportunity for New York-area artists to develop and exhibit a site-specific project as a solo exhibition. The 2025 applications were reviewed by a panel of arts professionals including Jordany Genao, a Dominican interdisciplinary artist and educator; Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, an artist whose practice unfolds performatively through creative experiences within the quotidian, and the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism at the intersection of creativity and healing; and Gugelberger.

  • Jennifer Tobias

    Jennifer tobias

    Jennifer Tobias

    Jennifer Tobias is a scholar, artist, and illustrator based in New York City. Her practice is driven by a curiosity and love of research, making, and communicating. Tobias’ illustrations are published in Design and Baking (Mixam), Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers (Princeton Architectural Press), and Design is Storytelling (D.A.P.), all authored by Ellen Lupton. She earned a BFA from Cooper Union, an MLS from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in Art History from the CUNY Graduate Center. Learn more about the artist at https://www.ideasinto.pictures 

Also on view

Flwr garden
  • Nature
  • Talks + Tours

Hanging with the Herps

  • Families

Family Art Project: Garden Guardians

  • Families

Family Art Project: Garden Guardians