Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed
Ash Love

Colorful and seductive. Almost flashy. One might describe Ash Love’s works as talkative, extroverted — haters will call them shallow and self-absorbed. By echoing the immediacy and rapid consumption of capitalist language, the artist reclaims it and offers alternative readings. The exhibition Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed thus confronts the intimate with its social representations, those talismanic objects of our emotions and bonds, and highlights how consumer society has often co-opted them.

Unlike my rag of shame, Ash Love’s comfort objects are not repulsive. Under the title CHILDLIKE THINGS (2025), the series takes the form of anthropomorphic glass hearts, reminiscent both of the crab emoji — representing the Cancer zodiac sign, known for emotionality and attachment — and of the plush toys one wins at fairground booths. A successful shot, a rewarded performance with an unambiguous “I love you” printed on the stuffed heart’s chubby belly. An explicit metaphor for romantic conquest, this object is traditionally given to one’s beloved. A childhood object made socially acceptable for adults. Like prize plushies, the hearts in the CHILDLIKE THINGS series are fake relics of childhood: literally polished, smoothed, and varnished to please our disciplined gaze. Though not mass-produced in Asia and discarded after a few weeks of passionate romance — but instead hand-blown in the southwest of France — they still offer an image of love: here, a hard and fragile symbol, that is literally hollow inside. They will never end up at the bottom of your bed. What this heart represents is the integration of emotion into the cycle of consumption. Shoot. Win. Offer. Expect in return. Throw away. Cry. Repeat. Love has become a commodity, its markers conveying simple, quickly digestible messages. By appropriating these forms, Ash Love highlights the paradox they embody: mass-produced, inexpensive objects that symbolize and simplify essential human emotions and values.

The paintings in the series gen ∞ (2025) are made of colorful backpacks customized with little accessories, assembled like a patchwork. The brand isn’t visible, but it’s immediately obvious to anyone who attended school in France from the 1990s onward. They’re Eastpak backpacks, which have populated schoolyards in middle and high schools for decades. Produced in countless colors and patterns, worn high on the back or slung low — depending on the trends and times — these backpacks are recognizable, endlessly repeated. They embody the normalization that sets in after childhood with Darwinian cruelty. Conform or disappear. Wear (buy) an Eastpak or be excluded. Ash Love cuts, unstitches, almost dissects this symbolic object of social regulation that arrives with adolescence, perhaps exorcising the fundamental need for belonging that accompanies this often ruthless, transitional phase.

Through these collage-assembled works, with dissonant yet cohesive prints stretched into a single canvas, Ash Love pays special attention to how things come together and connect — the processes that lead individuals to blend into the group. To conform to norms and find one’s place in a society governed by appearance and ownership. Lastly, Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed features a gigantic mirrored bow, titled attachment style (2025). The bow both decorates and binds. Of course, it implies a gift — and therefore, an act of consumption. Here, it also allows us to self-reflect, examine, and perhaps gauge to what extent even our deepest connections are now commodified, controlled, and regurgitated in the form of simple, colorful, appealing symbols — the heart, the bow, the iconic backpack of our adolescence. Rather than chasing an illusory quest for authenticity, Ash Love embraces the forms that surround us. They deconstruct them, charge them with meaning, and exhaust them. As for me, I’m still carrying around my doudou. Old and faded, it’s the only thing that resists the mechanics of the market.