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Sylvia Sukop

ALEX, AMEN: Photographs by Sylvia Sukop

May 15 - July 23, 2004
Reception: Saturday, May 15, 6 - 8pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica

18th Street Arts Center presents "Alex, Amen." an exhibition by photographer Sylvia Sukop and curated by Judith Keller, May 15 - July 23, 2004 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. The reception will be Saturday, May 15, 6-8pm. This will be the first in a new exhibition series entitled Spontaneous Combustion that is dedicated to showcasing emerging contemporary artists in the greater Los Angeles area and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The show will coincide with Black Panthers, a collection of historical photos of the movement by Ruth Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, curated by Tim Wride, Photo Curator at LACMA.

Sylvia Sukop began an extended documentary project photographing her family in the late 1970s. Her brother Alex, the youngest of seven siblings, was born in 1981. In 2000, exactly one month before his 20th birthday, Alex died of colon cancer. The exhibition "Alex, Amen." presents the artistÕs intimate portraits of her brother -- and those who cared for him on the collective farm where he lived in eastern Washington -- during the final months of his life. Being shown for the first time, the photographs are part of a larger body of work in progress, "Elegy/Manifesto," which includes Alex's own writing as well as portraits taken throughout his life, starting at birth.

Sylvia Sukop received an M.A. in Photography from New York University and the International Center of Photography in 1994, and was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Germany in 1995-96. Her work has been exhibited in New York, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. The artist's previous solo exhibition at 18th Street Arts Complex in 1999, "How Still, How Fast," featured selections from an ongoing project spanning more than 20 years, photographs documenting four generations of her family. In 1993 Sukop received the Curator's Choice Award from New York's Artists Talk on Art. She is also a writer and educator, and a volunteer for the Jewish Hospice Project Los Angeles.

18th Street programs are supported by the James Irvine Foundation, California Community Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, National Endowmwnt for the Arts, Santa Monica City Cultural Affairs Division, L.A. County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Foundation, J. Paul Getty Grant Program, and others.

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