EDC Remixed

Three artists create original works inspired by Electric Daisy Carnival’s iconic imagery.

Keri Ruediger on the inspiration behind Electric Fields (digitally rendered in Corel Painter and Photoshop): I’ve never been to EDC, but after reading interviews with people and watching videos, I got the sense that attendees feel like going to the show is their way of being free and enjoying themselves; so I wanted to do a piece that was summery, fun and fantasy-based.

Performers dress up as fairies and other creatures, and I thought, “Why not make it a field of electric daisies and make everything super colorful with all neon colors?” I’m used to digitally painting in two-by-three-inch squares, so doing a piece of this size—three feet by two feet—was a really big endeavor. I wanted to push myself artistically and make it happen.

EDC feels like a place where people go to escape and be who they want to be—where they don’t have the obligations of everyday life. I think my piece represents that sense of fantasy and escape.

JoeX2 on the inspiration behind 9th Wonder (acrylic and spray paint on canvas): I’ve been making art since I was six years old. My dad was a painter from the Caribbean—Trinidad and Tobago. As a little kid, I would sit next to him, painting by his side. I was always a graffiti writer, painting letters and B-Boys and characters that way. When he passed away in 1996, I started digging a little bit deeper into the art world and myself as a painter and an artist.

I went to my first couple of underground clubs in the early ‘90s out here in L.A. To me, EDC means a hell of a great time. You get to explore and see people having fun in different ways. It’s a magical night to get lost in the music and attractions you won’t see anywhere else.

I hope everyone gets the same enjoyment out of the painting that I get putting it together. They can all get a glimpse of EDC from my piece and a feeling of what it’s like, even if they’ve never attended the show.

Juan Muniz on the inspiration behind Bunny PLUR (acrylic on canvas): I have a character I created called “Felipe;” he’s a little bunny character, almost like a person in a bunny costume. I use him in most of my work. So there’s this little boy character and this little girl character coming together and making the heart shape with their hands and exchanging kandi in front of this massive electric daisy.

I was really close to the huge electric daisy when I was painting last year, and it was so beautiful—moving and full of color. People were congregating around it. I wanted to use that to represent that moment in time of two strangers coming together.

This event is bigger than life; it’s like going into a different world. The contrast between the enormous daisy that I’m doing in the background shows the scope of how big this thing is and how small we are compared to the world and the universe in general.

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