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 present moment.


Originally trained as an anthropologist, Jeff has been a practicing artist for two decades and has exhibited work in locations around the world including Los Angeles, Vancouver, and the Czech Republic. In 2018, he completed a 2,400 square foot solo site-specific installation “Science For a Better Life,” in which he explored the chemical and visual history of Bayer Pharmaceuticals at Yale University's West Campus in New Haven, a former Bayer facility. 


Recent exhibitions include “Double Take: Familiar Objects in Unexpected Materials” at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT, “The Past Pushes Forward” at Omola Studios in New Haven, CT, and “Circadian Rhythms,” curated by URSA Gallery in Bridgeport, CT. In 2024, he will participate as part of a project called “A Suitcase” at Kunstraum Super in Vienna, Austria.


Ostergren is a recipient of a 2023 Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, and The Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists Grant, an annual project based-grant in New Haven. He was also 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, from 2018-2019, Ostergren ran Tilia Projects, an occasional project space, out of his studio in New Haven.


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.

Photo by Monique Atherton