SSUR

Known in the commercial art world as SSUR©, New York’s OG visionary Ruslan Karablin has been an endless personage in The City’s Downtown Art Scene for nearly 2 decades.

Born in Soviet Ukraine, Karablin immigrated in 1975 to New York’s Coney Island, Brooklyn at age 5. Coney Island set the stage to what would be Karablin’s underlying theme in so much of his work, being a poignant inspiration not only because of it’s romantic fantasies, but also life as seen through his eyes and a childhood spent in an impoverished minority environment (The Hood). Culture clashes, world travels, and everyday struggle are elements which resonate in the SSUR© lifestyle.

In 1989 Karablin began producing paintings under the pseudonym SSUR©, for private collectors and exhibitions. Followed by a series of silkscreened art on tee shirts as a means of making the images more commercially available to the public.

Drawing inspiration from the fantasy of movies such as ‘Planet of the Apes’, In the early 1990’s SSUR© created an iconographic image which fuses the Revolutionary Che Guevara with Cornelius from POTA, known as ‘The Rebel Ape’ or ‘Guerrillas in the Midst’… The Rebelape icon has become a fictional “voice of the times defined by an image”.

In 2000, Caviar Cartel was introduced to the world through a series of tees and clothing inspired by the name’s Russian heritage. Alluding to rare decadent luxuries.

The Caviar Cartel later spawned a crew of characters from classic children’s stories gone wrong- Animation in progress.
br />The mafia family has its roots in the woods and their business being black market caviar trade. Destined for human consumption via a chain of hierarchy organized crime figures consisting of the capo Rabbit, his underboss and soldier wolves, 3 not so little pigs, and of course the source of the Caviar, the sturgeon, salmon and their henchmen. The caviar gets to the humans with the help of Grandma thugs and Dirty Rottenhood.

SSUR© has created, signature pieces for Supreme, Kangol, DC Shoes, Medicom Toy Japan, Boost Mobil, KidRobot, Swatch, Converse and others.

Encompassing popular culture, Hip Hop, eclectic music, Russian heritage, The Black Hand, social consciousness and Revolutionary Iconography is the SSUR© manifesto.

SSUR© injects a championing of the anti-hero in modern urban myth.

From Us Crazy Kids