Jonathan Olivares

The Weitzman Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Contemporary Art are pleased to present an artist lecture and artist presentation with Jonathan Olivares whose designs engage a legacy of form and technology, ask to be used rather than observed, and are conceived in relationship to the architectural environment. 

This free public lecture is part of a series that gathers distinguished artists, activists, writers, and disruptors whose work engages with the social and cultural themes of our time.

About the Series

The Institute of Contemporary Art, the Weitzman Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to present a series of free public lectures and artist presentations that connect a group of distinguished artists, writers, activists, and disruptors to the Philadelphia public.

In their varied approaches and techniques, these individuals speak to ICA’s ethos of artistic experimentation and practice that engages with the social and cultural themes of our time. As artists, writers, and cultural producers, their artwork and criticism expand across themes of popular culture, queer life, kinship & community, and de/construction through the utilization of sculpture, performance, sound, collage, installation, and more.

In this lecture series, we invite you all to engage in conversation with our participants and become a part of an active dialogue that explores the stake of contemporary art in our society and culture.

Jonathan Olivares was born in Boston in 1981 and graduated from Pratt Institute. In 2006 he established his industrial design practice, which is based in Los Angeles. His designs engage a legacy of form and technology, ask to be used rather than observed, and are conceived in relationship to the architectural environment. His projects include a showroom for Kvadrat (New York City, 2022), a retail shop for Camper (Rockefeller Center, 2019), the installations Brujas Training Facility (Performance Space New York, 2018) and Room for a Daybed (Kortrijk Biennale Interieur, 2016); the Aluminum Bench (Zahner, 2015); the Vitra Workspace, an office furniture showroom and learning environment (Vitra, 2015); the exhibition Source Material, curated with Jasper Morrison and Marco Velardi (2014); and the Olivares Aluminum Chair (Knoll, 2012). In 2018 Selected Works, a monograph about Olivares work, was released by powerHouse Books. Olivares’ work has been published internationally, granted design awards—including Italy’s Compasso d'Oro—and is included in the permanent design collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, and the Vitra Design Museum. In 2022 Olivares became the Senior Vice President of Design for Knoll. 

Registration
Register to attend in-person here | Attend via Zoom here

Captioning will be available for this program via Zoom. If you require any other accessibility accommodations such as audio description or ASL interpretation, or have any questions about the program, please contact Brittany Clottey at bclottey@ica.upenn.edu.