---

In an age of global instability, the threat of chaos looms. Or is the threat more spectral than real? The fear of chaos may simply be our response to living in a world controlled by powerful forces beyond our understanding. Chaos and Awe demonstrates the aptness and relevance of painting as a medium for expressing the uncertainty of our era. It presents more than fifty paintings, by an international array of contemporary artists, that induce sensations of disturbance, curiosity, and expansiveness - the new sublime, derived not from the unfathomable mystery of nature but from the hidden and often insidious forces of culture. Essays by art historians and "painters who write" offer context and illumination.

---

"If artists at the onset of the 20th century hoped to grasp the apparently limitless possibilities of modernity, the 21st century has opened with a darker and more anxious perspective. Chaos and Awe maps the new consciousness emerging from our encounters with cyberspace, globalism, genetic engineering, and social media through the ever-renewable medium of painting. It´s a wild and unpredictable ride into the new unknown." - Eleanor Heartney, art writer and contributing editor, Art in America and Artpress; author of Art & Today and coauthor of The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium

---

Mark W. Scala is Chief Curator at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.

---