I make work because I have to. There is only the fact of a self that refuses to cohere, and the compulsion to wrestle that incoherence into form.

Working from Mexico City, I operate under the name elif collective because the singular "I" has never felt adequate. The name acknowledges multiplicity. The negotiation between order and chaos, between what I am told I should be and what I know myself to be, is a demand the work makes of me.

My process is confrontational. I build surfaces up with acrylic, house paint, whatever is at hand, then I attack them. I scrape, I excavate, I destroy what I have made in order to find what is underneath. This is the only honest method I know for getting at something true. The paintings carry the evidence of their own making, every scar and revision visible, because I am interested in showing the struggle. Christopher Wool taught me that the surface is an arena. I have learned that it is also a witness.

The sculptures come from the city itself. Rebar, concrete, textiles pulled from the street. I assemble them into forms that feel like they might stand or might collapse, because that is the condition I know best. They are negotiations with gravity, with material, with the question of whether anything can hold together.

I care too much. I carry too much. The work is the only place where that weight becomes useful. What you see is the residue of the fight to have one.

Christian Pantoja