Don Suggs @ Ben Maltz/L.A. Louver
Published in Beautiful/Decay magazine
Don Suggs
Two new contemporaneous shows, “One Man Group Show” at the Ben Maltz Gallery and “Concentric” at the L.A. Louver, bring together a survey of over thirty-eight years of work, including recent paintings and sculptures, by Los Angeles based artist Don Suggs.
At first glance, Suggs’ multi-faceted oeuvre, which encompasses a startling array of mediums, messages, and points of reference, appears to lack continuity—the title “One Man Group Show” seems particularly apt to describe Sugg’s idiosyncratic stylistic shape-shifting. Upon further inspection, however, it becomes clear that cohesion is derived not from a “trademark” manner of creating imagery, but rather Suggs’ unique brand of intellectual iconoclasm and unrestrained spirit of inquiry. Suggs delights in revealing that the fixity of meaning is merely an illusion, which he systematically disassembles and exposes.
This is not to say, however, that Sugg’s work is overly cerebral or austere. On the contrary, what makes Suggs appealing as an artist is his slightly mischievous sense of humor and playfulness, combined with an acute sensitivity to formalist concerns.
Take Suggs’ delectable candy-colored plasticware wall sculptures—ironically entitled Fleurs du Mall.Baudelaire’s seminal volume of verses is transformed into a bratty pun, a tongue in cheek jab at our nation’s decidedly unpoetic, consumerist plastic “mall” culture.
Suggs’ Feast Poles, totem-like monuments comprised entirely of kitsch thrift-store tzochkes, continue in a similar vein. These bizarre taxonomic effigies to cast-off American culture have a delightful immediacy and ostentatiousness. They serve as a kind of updated sculptural riff on Dutch pronk still lives—sumptuous paintings depicting imported fruits and expensive objects such as Chinese porcelain, designed to display 17th century Netherlands’ economic prosperity. In this case, however, Suggs’ utilizes the iconography of our contemporary culture: leering Bugs Bunny cups, plastic hot dogs, Tiki statuettes and rubber fishes, to name a few. When stacked in this heroic fashion, the products of our glorious civilization are simultaneously rendered beautiful once again and comically tawdry.
Perhaps most extensive are Suggs’ Patrimony/Matrimony series: swirling canvases whose rich, glossy colors and slick surfaces function, at the very least, as visually enticing works of minimalist geometric abstraction, calling to mind elaborations on Kenneth Noland’s circle paintings. Add to the equation, however, that the paintings’ color schemes are derived from canonical works of art (meticulously matched and ordered according to prominence, composition and psychological force in the referenced painting) and Suggs’ modus operandi is revealed. What is present in these works evokes that which is absent, and is simultaneously both enriched and haunted by the absence—meaning in these metapictures is constantly deferred. Though they are instilled with the aura of the appropriated historic “originals,” they are in essence distortions or translations of the prior semiotic assemblages, subtly shifting the former connotations to create a new sign. Like Pop-inspired mandalas, the concentric color strata in Patrimony/Matrimony function like painted tree rings, evoking time, growth, progression or history and invite meditation on the correlation between source and translation, original and copy. In a world deluged with cheap simulacra, where Frida Kahlo tote bags, Picasso coffee mugs, Van Gogh greeting cards and the like smatter the cultural landscape, Suggs’ work asks us to reconsider those iconic paintings we have seen so many times that we no longer truly “see” them.
At his core, Suggs is an excellent craftsman—his seductive objets d’art are skillfully made and never aesthetically disappoint. Though perhaps disjointed to some, the delight in this remarkable collection of work lies precisely in Suggs’ somewhat risky refusal to commit to a predictable practice—admirable in a commercial contemporary art market where “brand-identity” and other such marketing ploys take precedence over free-spirited exploration and sincere investigations.