Street Art Enlightens!

Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation:
The Street Art of Chase
March 19,2008 Written by: Steven
LA.CityZine.com is a website about Los Angeles and everything in it.


“The hardest thing to do in life is to send love in response to hate…” Those golden words scroll across a screen as you wait in a sea of black. Queuing an ethereal hip hop beat you are about to enter the world of stencil street artist, Chase.

Belgian by birth, Chase, like so many other transient artists has journeyed in search of creative outlets and experience. Once an avid skateboarder in his youth, this energy transferred over into the world of his art. Yet Chase is just another LA transplant… or is he? Searching for answers about life, fleeting youth and creative energy, where can we look for inspiration? Surrounded by a sea of rapid highways, scratchy airwaves and blinkers bouncing off concrete, we suffer in a wasteland of thought. Drones of being. But, sprinkled upon the tar and metal are rays of light and innovation.



“Remember who you are.” A mural done free of charge by a man with a simple message. This existential idea is so simplistic that at first glance you might overlook it’s significance. In the world we live in we are constantly bombarded by mindless advertisements, war, poverty, images of greed. Have we lost touch with our core and the creative energy which feeds our dreams and fuels our purpose?

Good art makes us marvel… how? Great art makes us think… why? A key to Chase’s work is forcing the viewer to appraise - not only the spaces and situations around themselves but within themselves as well. Street Art since the early days of Graffiti in the “Boogie Down” Bronx has been sowing ideas in the subconscious of society. The Lower class sent out messages of innovation and creativity and gave hope. Where there was once only a desolate landcape filled with dreary dreams and tumultuous thought, grew an imagination and a voice.

With street artists such as Chase, we see a positive message taking root in the underground and bubbling over into our everyday society. Chase has had fine art exhibits all over the world, Belgium, NYC, and Los Angeles; but it’s his ability to connect with a society on the street level that gives his message the most meaning. People young and old are yearning for inspiration packaged in small easy identifiable messages such as some of Chase’s favorite mantra’s, ” Be the Change,” “You can’t until you say you can,” “be peace” and “seek truth: knowledge is power.”
Passing to and fro in this life, humming along and spewing exhaustion into the air, we regurgitate countless thoughts and images, it all takes a heavy toll. Chase’s artwork not only implies for you to stop, relax and take a second to look and think, but his simple messages demand it.


When asked about the written messages in his work, Chase responds, “The messages definitely plays an integral role, and my work wouldn’t be the same without them. I often say that the aesthetics are just there to attract the eye, but the messages are there to stimulate the mind.” These mantras of positivity resonate deeply. Let us all go out, create and plant our own seeds of enlightenment within ourselves, and others.