Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
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RESUME
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.
Recent solo exhibitions include Saturation Points at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, and High Society at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. He has also participated in group exhibitions throughout Connecticut, New York, Los Angeles, and Vienna. Upcoming solo shows include the Mercy Gallery at the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, CT, and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT - his first museum solo exhibition.
Ostergren is a recipient of a 2024 Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, where he is currently exhibiting work alongside other recipients. He also received an Artist Grant from the Puffin Foundation last year. In 2023, he was awarded an 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 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, a community exhibition 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.
CV
Education
2006 MFA, Fine Art, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
1998 BA, Anthropology/Gender Studies, Rice University, Houston, TX
Selected Exhibitions
2027 Chemical Impressions, Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT (solo exhibition)
2026 Prescriptive Visions, Mercy Gallery, Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, CT (solo exhibition)
2025 Saturation Points, Sacred Heart University Art Gallery, Fairfield, CT (solo exhibition)
The Lillian Orlowski and William Freed Award Exhibition, The Provincetown
Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Beauty Is A Blast: For Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Art Cake, Brooklyn, NY
Inertia, Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT
Re-Figured, Georgetown Arts & Cultural Center, Redding, CT
Æmpire Again, curated by John O’Donnell, Artspace, Hartford, CT
Secondary Effects, Celeste LeWitt Gallery at UConn Health, Farmington, CT
2024 High Society, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT (solo exhibition)
Zero Art Fair, Elizaville, NY
A Suitcase: 37x21x21”, Picture Theory, New York, NY
A Suitcase: 95x55x55, Kunstraum Super, Vienna
2023 Double Take: Familiar Objects in Unexpected Materials, Mattatuck Museum,
Waterbury, CT
The Past Pushes Forward, Omola Studio, New Haven, CT
Circadian Rhythm, URSA Gallery at Colorblends House, Bridgeport, CT
2022 Avidya, URSA Gallery, Bridgeport, CT
2019 near orbit: in state, on paper, Melanie Carr Gallery, Essex, CT
2018 Death Masks, Artspace, New Haven, CT (solo exhibition)
Science For a Better Life, Yale University West Campus, New Haven, CT (solo
exhibition)
Monsters among/within, Hans Weiss Newspace Gallery at Manchester
Community College, Manchester, CT
2016 Lost & Found, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT
In Politics We Trust, BOFFO, New York, NY
2015 In Conversation, Seton Gallery, University of New Haven, New Haven, CT
2014 Ellipses Project, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT (collaborative project)
2013 The Furthest Distance Between Two Points, Wharton/Espinosa, Los Angeles, CA
Your Content Will Return Shortly, Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT
2010 Betwixt and Between, Curated by Liza Statton, Artspace, New Haven, CT
2007 Performance/Film/Video, Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Medical/Arts, NewTown @ the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA
The Collective Body, Galerie Califia, Horazdovice, Czech Republic
Grants and Awards
2025 White Columns Curated Artist Registry, New York, NY
2024 Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant, Provincetown Art Association and
Museum, Provincetown, MA
Artist Grant, The Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ
2023 Connecticut Artist Fellowship, Connecticut Office of the Arts, Hartford, CT
The Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists Grant, New Haven, CT
2022 Finalist, Marjorie Strider Foundation Grant, New York, NY
2021 Artist To Watch. Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Artist's Resource Trust Fund for Individuals, Berkshire Taconic Community
Foundation, Sheffield, MA
Residencies
2026 Low Season Artist Residency, Block Island, RI
Video Screenings/Events
2022 “Your Brain on Avidya”, URSA Gallery, Bridgeport, CT
2019 “Video Snack 7: Video Object”, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
2018 “Video Snack 6: Video as a Second Language”, Fikra Graphic Design Biennial,
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
2017 “Video Snack 6: Video as a Second Language”, El Museo de Los Sures,
Brooklyn, NY
Talks
2023 “No Dimension: Drugs, Dots, and Spaces of Molecular Embodiment,” Ultraspace
Conference, Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, Yale University
“The Pharma-Chroma-Ceutical Complex”, Artist Talk, University of Oregon
Selected Bibliography
Lombardi, D. Dominick. “Jeff Ostergren: ‘High Society’ - Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT” The New Art Examiner, September 6, 2024
Gellman, Lucy. “Happy Birthday, Bitsie Clark,” Arts Paper, November 6, 2023
Slattery, Brian. “Artist Finds The Drug In The Paint,” New Haven Independent, October 13, 2023
Smith, Terri C. “Studio Visit: Jeff Ostergren,” Art New England, May/June 2023
Pineda-Salgado, Andrea and Danielle Hyams - “Last Word: Art on Big Pharma” – Epicenter-NYC, January 11, 2022
Gleisner, Jacquelyn. “Studio Visit: Jeff Ostergren,” Connecticut Art Review, July 25, 2019
Collins, Ann C. “ArtSeen: False Flag: The Space Between Paranoia and Reason,” The Brooklyn Rail, December 11, 2018
Peryer, Marisa. “Vacant West Campus building transforms into Art Space,” Yale Daily News, October 30, 2018
Dunne, Susan. “Real Art Ways Expands on Concept of Found Objects,” Hartford Courant, December 1, 2016
Nathaniel Lee, “Critics’ Pick: Your Content Will Return Shortly,” Artforum.com, March 2013
Judy Birke, “Artspace Video Exhibition is a Brave and Worthwhile Show,” New Haven Register, December 5, 2010
Published Writings
“No Dimension: Drugs, Dots, and Spaces of Molecular Embodiment,” Ultra Space Volume One, Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, Yale University, April 2024
“Some tranquilizers overtranquilize, but on Stelazine she’s calm and alert,” The Perch, Volume 6: Substance, 2024
“Down in the Uncanny Valley: The Landscapes of Ruth Lantz,” Independent Essay, February 2024
“Tristes Nootropiques,” Utopian Megapraxis, (UU)ater, Issue 1, February 2024