The artist has been in the news lately thanks to the pop singer Ariana Grande, whose team is being accused of looting Kush’s imagery in the music video for “God is a woman.” Kush’s works depict a tiny woman dancing within the flame of a candle; Grande’s video portrays the star in a nearly identical scenario. It’s not the first time this has happened to him—Kush previously pursued a similar case against the pop singer Pink back in 2007. The artist is indignant, but also confident in his claim. (He’s also not a Grande fan—Pink Floyd and Moby are more his speed.)

“I feel there is a lack of ideas out there,” Kush said, reflecting on the appropriation of his work. “They think it’s going to go unnoticed…they change a few shapes.…Maybe they think, Vladimir Kush, it’s a Russian name—maybe he’s far away, he’s not even going to notice, and he doesn’t have the capacity to do anything about it.” Regardless of whatever minor tweaks the music-video director made to his imagery, Kush said that it was clearly his underlying concept that had been pilfered. “Once you start trying to do that, you’re tapping into Kush art,” he said. “You’re tapping into Metaphorical Realism, that’s been invented right here.”

If Grande thought that Kush was some scrappy amateur without legal recourse, she chose the wrong artist to borrow from. Kush’s original paintings, he said, retail for $30,000 to $40,000 (for 11-by-14-inch canvases) and can climb to $100,000 (for 30-by-40-inch works). His operation has also sprawled into other, complementary ventures. The Kush brand encompasses “sculptures, a jewelry line, books…we even have perfume,” the artist told me. “We have a watch—I designed a watch! I designed some furniture as well. Metaphorical Realism has a lot to say.” (Kush’s studio has also produced an adult coloring book iPhone app, called Aries the Sheep.)