If only life was as simple as black and white. From charcoal to a blank page, these two extremes of the spectrum and every nuance in between are one of the building blocks of art. Here are some of best black, white and grey artworks on show now.
Gruzis monochrome paintings are so perfectly painted they almost look airbrushed or digital. His use of shadow, shape and 'space grey' paint is in a league of its own.
This Chicago-based artist is one of the graphic artists that once you see you don't forget. His black and white works brim with humour, madness, pattern, hand and goggly eyes.
Scottish sculptor Rothschild makes brilliant black metal works - sometimes dropping with black fabric pieces that cut gallery spaces up like a pen on a piece of paper.
Team Gallery's current Chez Perv group show is an ode to grey concrete and monochrome. It includes the work of Oscar Tuazon, an artist with a penchant for monochrome, this time in collaboration with Gardar Eide Einarsson and Matias Faldbakken.
Longo is the king of black and white. He made his name in the 1980s with big black and white figures and his latest show contains 12 charcoal version of Abstract Expressionist paintings from Rothko to Pollock.
If you missed it in NYC, its worth the trip (and at least the catalogue) to see this incredible retrospective of Christopher Wool paintings. His use of black and white is genius – from black stencil text works to scrawled paintings using everything from enamels to screen printing.
This British painter often employs monochrome – though often that means subtle strokes of pale blue or washed-out grey. These simple seeming pieces are all about shapes and traces. His solo show at Max Hetzler coincides with gallery weekend.
If you're into the abstract, Grabner, who gained a good dose of praise for her work co-curating this year's Whitney Biennial, makes work about philosophy, repetition, and mathematical order. Often in grey.
Hancock is one of those artists quietly plugging away at the weirdest fictional world you've ever seen. This 20 year retrospective of psychedelic and often monochrome drawings, gives TDH a proper dose of attention.