BICA SCHOOL PROJECT SPACE
11.13.26 – 12.19.26
Opening Reception: Friday, November 13th, 7-10PM
works by:
Gardner Astalos
Marjan Khorramgolkaran
Olivia Long
Sudi Wang
First, in art and writing, was the mark. A mark on a page invites a “reading”; a mark made on a surface enacts its maker onto the world; marks the beginning of a fundamental unit of meaning.
Yet how in control are we of the marks we make, as artists? Can standardized, seemingly identical marks—the words on a page, passing for mere conveyors of information—ever truly be the same? What does a mark ‘stand for’? When we take meaning from a mark, what is it we’re actually seeing?
In printmaking, any given mark can only have been made under the specific conditions of the moment—with that surface, that pressure, that medium, that moment. All of these specificities are hidden complications within the mark that passes for all other marks.
Playing with repetition without replicability, pattern without predictability, Compound Shadow brings together four artists for whom markmaking in print matters for its own sake.
Gardner Astalos is a multimedia artist from Buffalo, NY. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Print Media from the University at Buffalo. His work revolves around suburban and city landscapes and their differing ways of life—utilizing printmaking as a way to depict relationships with these spaces. He also studied book arts and worked for Ron Gaczewski in the Lockwood Library Preservation Department during his time at UB. He has shown work at Starlight Studio and Art Gallery, The Crucible Art Collective and Black Rock Arts.
Marjan Khorramgolkaran, originally from Tehran, is a multidisciplinary artist whose expansive creative journey spans ceramics, drawing, painting, 16mm filmmaking, jewelry making, fused glass, and textile design. Actively engaged in the Western New York arts community, her practice bridges a rich heritage of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary, conceptual exploration.
Marjan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Textile and Fashion Design and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Art in Tehran, followed by an MFA from the University at Buffalo. Currently, she is further expanding her artistic boundaries by pursuing her third Master of Fine Arts (Ceramics) degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
Olivia Long is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans print media, drawing, collage, and poetry. Exploring the intersections of image, text, memory, and grief, Olivia approaches creating as a form of listening—translating lived experience into visual abstraction. The written word is a recurring presence in their work, abstracted, obscured, layered, and transformed. Through this process, Olivia explores the deeply personal, and inevitably collective, experiences of love and grief.
Sudi Wang 王溯镝 is a printmaking artist based in Buffalo, NY, and who grew up in Yunnan, China. Working primarily in woodcut and relief printmaking, her work explores imagined mythologies, hybrid bodies, and monster imagery. Through slow, labor-intensive processes, she examines empathy, difference, and the ways societies define the human. from her work monsters are not meant to frighten, but to function as vessels for emotion, memory, and transformation.
