Gustavo Charif

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).