Don Suggs

L.A. Louver is pleased to present Face-Off, Again, a pop-up exhibition featuring works by Don Suggs (1945-2019).

The paintings were created by Suggs between 2017 and 2019 and were first showcased at L.A. Louver a week before the state’s mandatory stay-at-home order was issued in March 2020. In honor of the artist and this magnetic body of work that missed a proper presentation, L.A. Louver is pleased to showcase Face-Off, Again, open to the public for one week only.

The choice to debut this extrinsic series of paintings now, neatly during the 2026 midterm elections, was no coincidence. The country is facing a fork in the road, a metaphor Suggs often toyed with in his work, used more as a visual strategy to redirect any assumed intentions or singular meanings within his paintings. The works in Face-Off, Again beckon the viewer naturally, inviting them into a candy-colored landscape with flirtatious linear composites, laced in politically charged imagery that twist and turn at every take.

These bold, invented realities are overlayed in transparent blocks of color gently interrupting and shifting the linear dialogue within. The spontaneous, yet scripted use of imagery gives a thrilling pulse to each work, and the introduction and neat execution of his political ideologies, both seen and unseen, will speak to generations to come.

Don Suggs (1945-2019) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in San Diego, California. Suggs studied art, film and psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned both an MA in 1971 and MFA in 1972. Suggs was awarded two National Endowment for the Art Grants, in 1973 and 1991. A 38-year survey of Suggs’ paintings, drawings, photography and sculptures was presented at the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles in 2007. Titled One Man Group Show, the exhibition was co-curated by gallery director Meg Linton, and writer and curator Doug Harvey. In addition to making art, Suggs had a distinguished career as a teacher. He held positions at Florida State University, Tallahassee; Franconia College, New Hampshire; the University of Southern California; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, and UCLA, where he taught painting and drawing from 1983 to 2014.