Cristi Rinklin, Ecstatic Beatification, 2006, oil and acrylic on Dibond aluminum, 72” x 54”, with wall stencil 90” x 93”, Lent by the Artist, Courtesy RHYS Gallery, Boston, MA

LINCOLN, MA.- The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park presents Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century, on view through April 22, 2007. By the end of the last millennium, the art of abstract painting had been almost universally dismissed as irrelevant at best, and expired at worst. But now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstract painting is back with a bang – a Big Bang ! This term, cosmologically speaking, refers to the moment approximately 13.7 billion years ago that our universe explosively emerged from an unimaginably hot and dense point. Used here metaphorically, Big Bang! describes the current aesthetic explosion in which a new generation of artists is reinvigorating abstraction with paintings formally and conceptually relevant to many of the great intellectual concerns of this new century. (by courtesy of www.Artdaily.com)