Angst [Anxiety] – is the title of a series of paintings by Emilio Chapela. The artist follows a uniform principle for these. Only the first line is drawn with a ruler, after which he works freehand and in reference to his breathing. He inhales, begins drawing the line, and finishes it within one to two breaths. In this way, the artist enters a kind of “meditative rhythmic mode,” as he himself describes it. In this method, he combines abstract-geometric imagery with individual emotion, because his respective state is documented in the creation process of the work.
The Angst series goes back to a dream of the artist, in which he fell down a brightly colored waterfall while filming it. The colors in the dream came from contaminated water. In view of the water shortage in many regions of his home country, Mexico, this imagination gains particular relevance.