Black & White/ Shades of Meaning

What does it mean to see without the comfort of black and white? To experience a visual world stripped of the absolutes we’ve come to rely on—of shadow and highlight, of yes and no, of light and dark? In this 66th volume of Special Edition, we present a bold curatorial experiment that asks you to reconsider how art is perceived, how meaning is made, and how contrast can exist even in the absence of the extremes that usually define it.

Titled This Monochromatic Display, this edition challenges our collective visual vocabulary by removing the most fundamental elements of tonal contrast—black, white, and every shade of grey in between. The artists featured in these pages, hailing from all over the globe, have risen to this challenge with ingenuity, grace, and courage. Through photography, painting, ceramics, drawing, and mixed-media practices, they explore the boundaries of form, surface, and chromatic restraint in ways that feel both timeless and entirely contemporary.

To limit a palette is not to limit expression. In fact, it often does the opposite. With black and white eliminated, a space emerges for subtler contrasts: between warm and cool, matte and glossy, fluid and static. The focus shifts to texture, shape, and structure—where a ceramic’s curve casts a blush of shadow, or where a swath of crimson is pushed into tension against ochre. In photography, this means working against the grain of traditional tonal composition—relying instead on color value, light diffusion, and unconventional framing to create emotional resonance. In painting and drawing, it means paring down the image to its core visual logic—where what is omitted becomes as important as what is rendered.

In curating this volume, we sought artists who are not afraid of constraint. What emerged is a collection of works that do not merely adjust to the absence of black and white, but transcend it—finding a new visual language in its place. Some pieces glow with subtle, luminous intensity. Others pulse with saturated tension. Each reveals how powerful form becomes when freed from the familiar crutches of chiaroscuro.

Whether working in pigment, lens, clay, graphite, or assemblage, each contributor interprets the absence of monochrome in their own way. For some, it becomes a poetic exercise in restraint; for others, a gesture of rebellion against the binary logic that black and white often symbolizes—of clarity over ambiguity, of separation over fluidity. The results are sometimes meditative, sometimes jarring, always rich with intention.

As you turn these pages, we invite you to let go of old frameworks. This is not a volume about lack. It is about reinvention—of vision, of expectation, of how we define presence in the visual arts. Look closely. Look slowly. Without the directional push of black and white, the eye must navigate differently. It must wander. Linger. Discover.

This Monochromatic Display is an invitation to unlearn what you think you know about color and form. It is an act of seeing otherwise—a reminder that limitation often opens the door to liberation, that vision is not a fixed equation, but a fluid, evolving experience.

Welcome to Volume 66. Welcome to a world reimagined in the subtle spectrum between extremes.