D*Face’s Suck Face: From a Miami Mural to a Rare 2014 Print

At first glance, Suck Face by D*Face appears to capture a scene of unrestrained comic-book romance. A blonde woman embraces a bespectacled man as the pair lock lips, rendered in the bold outlines and heightened colours of a vintage American comic panel.

Look more closely, however, and the image becomes considerably less sentimental.

The man’s face is partially decayed, transforming an affectionate kiss into something darker and more unsettling. It is a characteristically sharp piece of visual storytelling from D*Face: immediate, humorous and nostalgic, but undercut by a reminder that romance, beauty and life itself rarely last forever.

Created in 2014, Suck Face became both a limited-edition screen print and one of D*Face’s most memorable large-scale murals, painted in Miami during the week of Art Basel.

D*Face and the darker side of Pop Art

D*Face, the working name of British artist Dean Stockton, has become one of the most recognisable figures in contemporary urban art. His work draws heavily on comic books, advertising, skate graphics and the visual language of twentieth-century American popular culture.

Although the influence of Pop Art can be seen in his clean outlines, speech-bubble narratives and dramatically posed characters, D*Face rarely allows these images to remain as polished or optimistic as they first appear.

Faces decay. Heroes are undermined. Romantic encounters are interrupted by death, disappointment or emotional disconnection.

D*Face has described the influence of artists such as Roy Lichtenstein as a way of creating an immediately understandable narrative. He then disrupts that familiar visual language, using it to explore the fragility of relationships, the artificial nature of modern romance and the darker consequences of a culture saturated with idealised imagery.

Suck Face is a particularly clear example of this approach.

What is happening in Suck Face?

The image shows two archetypal comic-book lovers caught in a dramatic embrace. The woman’s golden hair, closed eyes and carefully positioned hand create the appearance of an idealised romantic moment.

Her partner, however, is far from the conventional comic-book hero.

Parts of his face have withered away, revealing a skull-like figure beneath the surface. The deterioration turns the kiss into a contemporary memento mori: an image that places intimacy and mortality side by side.

Even the title, Suck Face, punctures the romance. The deliberately immature expression strips away any grand declarations of love and replaces them with something more physical, awkward and darkly funny.

The result can be read in several ways. It might represent the intoxicating early stage of a relationship, when the outside world temporarily disappears. It might suggest loving someone despite their flaws. More ominously, it may be a reminder that even the most passionate moment is temporary.

D*Face leaves enough ambiguity for all of these interpretations to exist at once.

The Suck Face mural at Art Basel Miami 2014

In December 2014, D*Face brought the image to an enormous public wall at José de Diego Middle School in Miami’s Wynwood district.

The mural was created during Art Basel Miami as part of a project involving Branded Arts and The RAW Project. Rather than appearing on a temporary exhibition wall, the work covered the side of the school building, turning the intimate comic-book scene into a monumental piece of public art.

At this scale, the contradiction at the heart of the image became even more pronounced. The embracing couple could be recognised from a distance, while the man’s decaying features revealed themselves as the viewer moved closer.

The building’s existing windows, vents and architectural details interrupted the illustration, rooting the polished comic-book image firmly within the physical environment of the city.

The wider RAW Project was established in Miami in 2014 and brought international artists to José de Diego Middle School, transforming its exterior walls with large-scale artworks during Miami Art Week. The project helped turn the school into an open-air collection of contemporary street art while bringing colour and creative attention to the site.

For an artist whose work frequently moves between gallery editions and the public street, the location was particularly appropriate. The mural allowed Suck Face to exist not simply as an image to be collected, but as part of the everyday visual landscape of Wynwood.

From the Miami wall to the screen print

The same composition was released in 2014 as a signed and numbered eight-colour screen print, published by Stolen Space in an edition of 150.

Measuring approximately 76.5 × 61 cm, the edition was printed on cotton-based fine-art paper. Its multiple layers of colour preserve the strong yellow, purple and green palette seen in the mural, together with the crisp black outlines that give the image its comic-book immediacy.

Transferring an image associated with the street into a carefully produced print does not necessarily soften its impact. Instead, the smaller format encourages a closer examination of the details: the fractured skin, the man’s hollow cheek and the winged emblem visible on his sleeve.

These details are easy to absorb as part of the overall scene, but collectively they disturb what would otherwise be a conventional image of romance.

With only 150 examples produced, Suck Face belongs to a relatively small edition from an important period in D*Face’s career. Examples have since appeared through galleries and specialist urban-art auctions, with the work remaining one of the artist’s most immediately recognisable romantic images.

Why Suck Face still resonates

More than a decade after it was created, Suck Face continues to feel characteristic of D*Face’s wider practice.

It is visually immediate without being straightforward. It borrows the language of nostalgia while refusing to become nostalgic. Most importantly, it captures the tension between our idealised image of romance and its more complicated reality.

The couple appear completely absorbed in one another, yet death is already present within the embrace. Love and decay are not shown as opposites; they occupy the same moment.

That contrast gives the work its lasting power. The image can be enjoyed for its bold composition, comic-book styling and dark humour, while still carrying a more uncomfortable message beneath the surface.

Suck Face by D*Face at Electric Gallery

Electric Gallery is presenting an edition of Suck Face by D*Face, professionally finished in a white frame.

The clean white framing gives the vivid yellows, purples and greens space to stand out, while retaining the clarity of the original screen-printed image. It offers an opportunity to collect one of D*Face’s most distinctive editions from 2014: an artwork connected to both his printmaking practice and the monumental mural created in Miami during Art Basel.

Discover the framed D*Face Suck Face print at Electric Gallery.