In “thanks for all the conditional love,” Brooklyn-based artist Esteban del Valle brings the absurdity and beauty of survival under late-stage capitalism to the forefront in vivid color. The solo exhibition, on view through January 17 at LaMontagne Gallery, highlights the resulting alienation from our humanity, the natural world, and each other—producing a narrative of the broader cultural detachment and disorientation of priorities that permeate everyday life. Del Valle’s body of work is truly interdisciplinary, from video, animation, and drawings to murals across the globe. Here, he uses a combination of acrylic, pastel, spray paint, pencil, and ink to put political and poignant contradictions on display.
It feels right that this exhibition begins with commentary on art itself, setting the tone for the tongue-in-cheek self-referential series. Visitors are immediately welcomed into the space by the rambling, but aptly titled painting The Blue Studio (But I’m talking about the same kinda work, the same style, so people can recognize it and don’t get confused, you know? Then once you’re famous—airborne, you know—you gotta keep doin’ it in the same way… even after it’s boring. Unless you want people to really get mad at you, which they will anyways.) (2025). In the entirely blue-and-white ink and acrylic piece, an artist bends over their workstation producing the same “live laugh love” sign over and over again, as evident from the stacks that surround them. Behind the artist, light streams in from a small, barred window above a sleeping child, a miniscule bright spot in the prison-like environment that the subject cannot see. Whether del Valle is alluding to artists and workers at large being confined to capitalist demands, or confronting the modern-day slavery of prison labor, an insidious lack of control is present. The artist has been condemned to the type of consumerist-focused art that thrives under capitalism—art that is easily mass-produced and sterile, inspiring complacency rather than critical thought or unique expression.
An eye-catching burst of vibrant color against the white wall, Soup du jour, je t’aime (2024) is featured prominently in the tight gallery space. The scene zooms in on a kitchen pot filled to the brim with various vegetables and, strangely, a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes mixed in with the rest of the ingredients. The pot’s contents boil over in a mess of saturated color. No evidence of a person is found, as the pot has been left unattended, signaling that both a neglected pot and a neglected life have the potential for disastrous consequences.
Soup du jour, je t’aime makes clear a disorienting existence, where luxury designer brands are put on the same level as the components of life (in this case, food) that are necessary for survival. Capitalistic motivations and a societal preoccupation with consumerist goods have made it no longer possible to distinguish the difference between the two.
A sense of disconnection, particularly from human relationships, is further found in the hidden nature of faces. In Invisible Problems (The Economy Suite) (2025), a finely dressed man and woman in muted shades of gray and brown have finished dining on an outdoor city-view patio, exuding wealth. Birds peck at their near-empty plates, but the couple is oblivious to the animals desperate for their scraps. Their faces are each rendered as a blur of white space, the only grounding feature being their large black sunglasses—a literal depiction of emptiness that creates a sense of hollow vapidness. Their problems are invisible but so are they, as they live off of empty and unfulfilling sustenance.
Other works in the series portray a less explicit view of emotional detachment, but a similar obscuring of faces. In Sunny Side (2025), a pair is seen together sitting in a restaurant, yet their faces are turned away from both the viewer and each other. Rendered in bright orange hues, they look out the diner window at something unseeable, plates of breakfast left untouched in front of them. In Gathering (2025), a woman’s face is not visible as she sits in a mess of broken plant pots, their stems visually mixed together with a collection of electrical cords. The scene is awash in green, but the neon glow reads more as an artificial light than any true connection to nature, underlying a separation from the natural world.
Sharing a title with the exhibition, Thanks for all the conditional love (2025) brings beauty and pain together in bright, warm color. A man lies facedown amid a scenic landscape, the orange and red tones of the ground fusing with the rosy hues of his trench coat. Multicolored butterflies, like gentle vultures, descend on him and rest on various parts of his collapsed body. There is an unsettling quality to his seemingly lifeless existence in the middle of an otherwise tranquil scene. The natural world asks nothing of a person, unlike capitalism’s conditional love and unrelenting demands. Perhaps it is only when our physical vessels are completely depleted that we may experience the unconditional love of and connection to nature. Perhaps it is only when we have no more left to give that we may escape the oppressive system, but by then it may be too late.
The exhibition’s description asks the question “What does survival look like in a culture estranged from the very relationships that sustain life?” Del Valle does not show us the path to a less detached survival, but rather confronts us with reality. He brings viewers face to face with society’s fractured relationship to the natural world and to each other, yet not with whether we are able to transcend it to reach a state of true connection and self-understanding. Under capitalism, everything is conditional: love, art, and existence itself. How we choose to move forward with this knowledge is another question entirely, but one that del Valle expertly provokes.
“thanks for all the conditional love” is on view through January 17 at LaMontagne Gallery, 450 Harrison Avenue, #1, Boston.
