Alon Zakaim Fine Art presents MONO / CHROMA — an exhibition that examines the role of colour, and its deliberate absence, across a diverse range of artistic practices. Bringing together works spanning painting, photography, and mixed media, the exhibition considers how artists employ chromatic intensity or restraint to shape perception, guide interpretation, and ultimately alter the viewer’s experience of a subject. Across varied techniques—from photorealism to abstraction—and subjects including the human form, still life, and broader cultural narratives, the exhibition offers a focused exploration of how colour conditions the act of looking.

The exhibition opens with a presentation of photorealism, where colour is deployed with precision to heighten both illusion and artifice. Robert Cottingham’s Rat exemplifies this approach; its meticulous rendering of a neon sign transforming an otherwise overlooked urban fragment into a compelling visual subject. Through sharp tonal contrasts and controlled saturation, Cottingham elevates the everyday, encouraging a reconsideration of how colour mediates perception. Alongside this, Kate Brinkworth’s The watcher (black and white no. 2) strips away colour entirely, foregrounding form, light, and texture. To this end, the work slows the viewer’s gaze, demonstrating how the absence of colour can intensify, rather than diminish, visual engagement.

Within the same space, the exhibition moves into photography, with a particular focus on the human form and its staging. Terry O’Neill’s Frank Sinatra on the Boardwalk, Miami captures a moment of composed theatricality, its black-and-white palette lending the image a timeless, cinematic quality. In contrast, Lorenzo Agius’s Lizzy Jagger employs colour to construct a carefully orchestrated, almost surreal interior in which the figure becomes both subject and spectacle. Together, these works reveal how photographic practice negotiates the boundary between reality and artifice, with colour—or its absence—playing a central role in shaping narrative and perception.

In the lower gallery floor, the first room shifts towards works engaging with cultural and historical themes. Gino Severini’s La bicyclette dans le soleil reflects a fascination with movement and modernity, its pointillist construction fragmenting form into a dynamic interplay of colour and light. In contrast, Jim Dine’s Way, Way Down South adopts a more expressive and material approach, where colour becomes both subject and gesture. Across these works, chromatic choices move beyond description, instead evoking broader cultural associations and histories, demonstrating how colour can function as a vehicle for meaning as much as representation.

The final room presents a resolution in abstraction, where colour is liberated from direct reference. Victor Vasarely’s E-VERT-ROUGE employs geometric precision and bold chromatic contrast to generate optical effects that destabilise spatial perception, while Anish Kapoor’s Untitled diptych offers a more contemplative encounter. Here, colour is reduced to subtle tonal gradations, dissolving the boundary between monochrome and chroma and drawing the viewer into an immersive, meditative space.