VLAD... aka Nicolas Van Varenberg is a self-taught Belgian-American artist, when he started as a graffiti artist painting the walls of downtown Portland, Oregon. He then moved to Los Angeles and began experimenting with acrylic paint on canvas, refining his style and honing his craft with local street artists. Although Vlad calls himself apolitical, his works provide a vivid representation of the 21st century obsession with hedonism among North American and European urban dwellers. The excessive agitation for the cult of money and the various drugs that rule the world and the culture of a certain youth today, the social pressure to always appear happy and active, selfish on social networks... 
 
Nicolas pays tribute to the ancestors of graffiti by citing the later works of "Blek le rat", which focus more on politics, the environment, and other social causes, as a major source of inspiration, both semantically and artistically. 'Aesthetic. invader another European ancestor of street art, with its heavy use of video game characters, is also an inspiration, as is Keith Haring.