Gustavo Charif
- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Gustavo Eduardo Charif born in San Miguel (Buenos Aires, Argentina),
the 18th of August of 1966. Soon after beginning his primary studies he
learned to write back to front, he did mental arithmetic, and he
imagined his first stories and makes his first paintings. In 1972 his
parents presented him with a toy projector "Cine Graf". With the help
of his brother and sister he painted an extensive strip of film paper
to adapt a book called Iron Head. Together with a cousin of his age he
projected his first theater pieces at his godmother's cabaret. In 1979
he attended secondary education at a Franciscans nuns' institution, and
he founded and ran an alternative magazine called Cosmos. Cosmos
organizes rock festivals in the parish church of his town. Since an
early age Charif has accomplished numerous of institutional and
personal studies of painting, literature, history of religions,
philosophy, epistemology, logic, topology, music, set design,
restoration of easel painting and régisseur. Since 1985 he started
collaborating with film-makers and réggisseurs and he shows his
paintings in Europe, Asia and American. He took part in big exhibitions
side by side with Pierre Alechinsky,
Salvador Dalí,
René Magritte,
Roland Topor and many others, being the
only Argentinean artist. He wrote for two years (1992-1994) the script
"Recontrapoder" with well known Argentinian painter Luis Felipe Noé. In
1995 he studies scenography at the Colon Theater of Buenos Aires. After
a personal crisis in 1996, and during a homeless period, he slept in
parks, borrowed places or at the Public Library. In the same year
Charif created stages for Jorge Polaco film
about Albrecht Dürer. In October 1997, for the 10th anniversary of his
first short film as a director, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos
Aires organized a retrospective in his honor. They showed a series of
inventions of techniques (one of which consists of sticking an
extensive microscopic collage to a previously transparent-like film
material). The Image Theory Center organized a new retrospective in
1998 of 14 films with three others film directors:
Werner Herzog,
Michael Verhoeven and
Werner Schroeter. Soon after this, his
film "Natural Baroque: The new success of the film industry", was
broad-casted at Cinelimite (programm of channel TV Bravo), together
with films by Maya Deren,
Kenneth Anger,
Stan Brakhage, and
Michael Snow. In July 1998 he
played the male devoured by the female on the experimental film
"Religiosa Mantis", directed by dancer and choreographer Vanina Serra.
In 1999 he started a parallel career and biography as Victorio Lenz,
and founded a religion that accepts no followers. In 2000 he arrived in
France selected by the Museum Baron Gérard (Normandy) to be part of the
exhibition "Kaléidoscopies" among artists like Dalí and writers like
Michel Butor y Michel Houellebecq. In
the same year, Charif printed a false cover of Le Figaro, that
distributed through all Paris announcing his invasion to conquest the
barbarian French people. There he met
Alejandro Jodorowsky, who invited
him to a public dialogue about his works and his future, with the help
of Tarot. In 2002 Fernando Arrabal and
Milan Kundera planned their first book of
bibliophile (40 copies) that brought them together and invited Charif
to make the illustrations. In July the "Encarnated Manifesto" was
published. The television show Trazos (channel à) transmitted an
episode dedicated entirely to Charif, as they had done before with
Antoni Tàpies. In 2012 he represented
Argentina with his artworks in international fair Art Expo Malaysia
(solo exhibition in Argentina Embassy's booth).
