Jeff Ostergren makes paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings, and installations about the intertwined histories of pharmaceuticals and color. His pointillist, color-saturated works, infused with actual pharmaceuticals and chemicals, utilize imagery from art history and advertising to explore the ecstasy and toxicity of our molecular present.

Originally trained as an anthropologist, Jeff has been a practicing artist for almost two decades and has exhibited work in locations around the world including Los Angeles, Vancouver, and the Czech Republic. Recent exhibitions include Recent exhibitions include “Avidya” at URSA Gallery in Bridgeport, CT, “Perverse Furniture” at Artspace in New Haven, CT, as well as a solo commissioned installation “Science For a Better Life,” a site-specific project at City Wide Open Studios in New Haven in which he explored the chemical history of Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He also screened work in Video Snack 7 in Richmond, VA in Fall 2019, and Video Snack 6 which showed in Brooklyn and the Fikra Design Biennial in Sharjah, UAE. Ostergren is a recipient of a 2017 Artist’s Resource Trust Grant from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation and was chosen a 2021 “Artist-To-Watch” by Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY.

He also has a curatorial practice, including a well-reviewed exhibition “False Flag: The Space Between Reason and Paranoia” at Franklin Street Works in Stamford, CT in 2018. In addition, Ostergren runs Tilia Projects, an occasional project space, out of his studio in New Haven, indefinitely on hiatus due to COVID-19.

Ostergren received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 2006, following upon receiving a BA in a double major of anthropology and gender studies at Rice University in Houston, TX in 1998. He lives and works in New Haven, CT.