Crush Curatorial is pleased to present Electric Mayhem: Caroline Wells Chandler and Jennifer Coates, a two person show with collaborative works by Chandler and Coates as well as a selection of their individual pieces made in response to each other's work specifically for this show.

Electric Mayhem is the name of the band on The Muppet Show that had their debut in 1975 and featured colorful puppets playing rock music. Electric Mayhem is best manifested in the character of Animal, who played drums and couldn’t contain his unwieldy orange and pink energy, and whose spirit has inhabited their collaborative drawings. Chandler and Coates have been drawing together for months, while watching early episodes of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, using the psychedelic, imaginary creatures as inspiration. Riffing on art history as much as puppets from the 1970s, they have reimagined figures from Fragonard, Matisse, Ensor and Bosch, situating them in candy colored landscapes, buzzing with alien-like auras.

Characters from Star Wars carry giant crayons and deliver nasty messages; money takes on strange new meaning; Santa has a minty anus. In addition to the collaborative drawings, Chandler and Coates will also be showing their own work. They have both been inspired by Matisse’s Joy of Life, with its intense, saturated color and utopian vision of pleasure. Chandler’s crocheted, gender-bending, tube sock wearing, dancing characters cavort and telepathically communicate with Coates’ animal spirits in the trippy, confectionary forest. This show was inspired by their friendship and their belief that they are cosmic siblings who are eternally bonded in the interlocking, buzzing spirals that exist on the flat surface on the outside of the universe and code what we think is reality.