Emilio Chapela

Arróniz presents El lago subió al cielo by Emilio Chapela.

I dreamed that the entire planet was flooded. The water advanced, reclaiming spaces.  I saw images of overflowing rivers and torrential rains. Water streamed across  rooftops and down hallways of buildings. The sea crept over the beach, flooding  houses, schools, cities, farmland, and mountains, until everything was submerged.

I understand my dream from a dual perspective. On one hand, the global vision: total  flooding as a harbinger of planetary collapse and climate change. A chronicle of a  foretold death, seen in fast-forward, as it happens. An image of hopelessness.

On the other hand, the dream felt deeply personal, like an inner overflow that flooded  me—first as a journey into my own body that overwhelmed me, before turning  outward again. I felt the flood widening my veins, my skin, my stomach, and my head.  I felt full and radiant. I woke up anxious about the planet’s future, but intoxicated with  emotion.

This exhibition is the result of that dream. It’s about floods, water rhythms, and solar  energy. It also speaks to the contradictions of Mexico City—founded on a vast lake  that no longer exists, yet somehow retains memory. The lake, like chilangos,  remembers through the body.

The show is also a personal reflection. My father often consulted the I Ching; it was his  compass in moments of important decisions. After his death, I inherited the book and  its readings. It orients me.

I cast the coins a few months ago: I received hexagram Kuai (Breakthrough), which  represents a rupture followed by resolution. It is the image of a lake rising to the sky,  a torrential downpour, a river that overflows and releases its pressure. The text  suggests new ventures: a breakthrough followed by resolution. A flood.

This exhibition proposes the flood as both image and metaphor—not only as  catastrophe, but as a force that transforms, cleanses, blends, reconciles, and demands  that we reimagine the world. The lake rises to the sky, the downpour falls, it floods us,  and the sky shines once again.

The selection of works in the exhibition alludes to great floods, or suggests subtle  water flows that layer, encounter obstacles, divert, or come to a halt. Kuai is the name  of a series of paintings presented here for the first time. They explore hydraulic  dynamics translated into geometric forms that either communicate or obstruct one  another.

The photographs in the Emergence series are about light understood as an emergent  phenomenon—one that appears under specific and unrepeatable conditions, like  lightning or a rainbow. Finally, the exhibition also includes other works that dialogue  with flooding, the deluge, Mexico City, and climate change, while also referring to  personal intensities: to forms of overflow that can be crisis, transformation, and  emotional fullness.

–Emilio Chapela