Art inspired by apocalyptic ideas will fill the DePaul University Art Gallery this winter in an exhibit featuring 500 years of literal and personal interpretations of the world’s end.

The show, "Apocalypse Now and Then: Art and the End of Time," features the work of 16 artists. It opens Jan. 16 with a 5 p.m. reception and runs through March 13. The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.

Two historical highlights of the show are a 1498 woodcut by artist Albrecht Durer and a 1488 Bible manuscript from the DePaul Library Special Collections opened to the Book of Relevation, the best known apocalyptic text. Durer’s woodcut illustrates the most famous image of the Apocalypse, the four horsemen: famine, pestilence, war and death.

While some artists in the exhibition, like Durer, draw their inspiration directly from the text, others take a more personal or ironic approach.

In a take-off on the four horsemen, Chicago artist Jason Messinger combines a literal interpretation of the Relevation text with an ironic point of view by transforming the horsemen into wedding cake topper figurines and marrying them off to Wonder Woman, Minnie Mouse, Barbie and the Statue of Liberty.

Louise H. Lincoln, director of the gallery, said one of the show’s extremes would be installed on the gallery’s front lawn. The large-scale sculpture pieced together from scrap metal signs and wood Chicago artist Ken Indermark has collected over the past 20 years is titled "Paradise Ahead."

Lincoln noted its irony. "One of the signs he found said ‘paradise ahead,’ and, of course, paradise is one of the things hoped for at the end of time."

Other artists find apocalyptic imagery the Holocaust, Vietnam War and environmental destruction.

Chicagoan Sarah Figlio paints catastrophic weather events, such as tornadoes, to explore drastic, life-altering events that are out of human control. Another Chicago artist, Charlie Cho, ponders the Francis Ford Coppola film "Apocalypse Now," 20 years later by contrasting stills from the movie with photographs of himself in varying situations, all displayed in a series of 1,092 four-by-five-inch photographs filling a complete wall of the gallery.

The exhibit is complemented by a lecture series exploring apocalyptic notions, held weekly from Feb. 2 through March 2.

The DePaul Art Gallery is located in McGaw Hall, 802 W. Belden Ave., on DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus. Its hours are Mondays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call the gallery at 773/325-7506.