- Born
- Birth nameGustavo Eduardo Charif
- Nickname
- Astronaut
- Height5′ 10¾″ (1.80 m)
- 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).- IMDb Mini Biography By: yasmine
- Defined himself as "an stateless who born in South America, lived in Europe and lives in Asia", Gustavo Charif is a visual artist, writer and experimental filmmaker, who shows his works around the world, and took part in international exhibitions where his artworks was showed beside artworks by classic renowned artists like Pierre Alechinsky, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Roland Topor or Pablo Picasso. In 1989 was named Special Guest at the First Art Biennial of Young Art for his body of work as experimental filmmaker (Recoleta Cultural Centre, Buenos Aires), and, in 1997, The Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires organized his first short film retrospective. Around those years, Charif wrote, with the Argentinian artist Luis Felipe Noé, the script for a future project to a feature film. His first feature length film, La razón (2010) (aka The Reason), was released in October 2010 and won the prize "to the excellence technical and photography" at the Festival de Cine Inusual (Buenos Aires). La razón (2010) includes an unreleased song by Moby. He made some artists' books, one of them with Fernando Arrabal and Milan Kundera, exhibited for the first time at the individual exhibition "Alexandria" (organized by the Centro Cultural Borges in 2004). In September 2012 he represented Argentina in Art Expo Malaysia, with a one man show. Soon later performs "Lamborghini Odyssey", a live painting commissioned by Lamborghini Kuala Lumpur. This painting was auctioned in 28th October in Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers, and the money was donated to purchase American art books for the National Visual Arts Gallery of Malaysia. In May 2013, the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Kuala Lumpur requested him to create an artwork about his personal vision of Qatar. This work was exhibited on 16th May at the international "Peace & Security Forum". In 2015 takes part of "The Selfie Show" in the MONA (Museum of New Art, Detroit, USA) in a big selection with international avant-garde artists. His artworks are found in important collections of Europe, Asia and America, and, from many years, Charif developed a parallel work as a anonymous musician, working in different projects under several secret names. He's an enthusiast of science and philosophy, and rejects all kind of pseudoscience and postmodern philosophers. About this, he say that "reality is richest than any interpretation".- IMDb Mini Biography By: MacFeral
- Often his films combine different languages.
- Usually he works on some fragments of his films with pictorial and cinematography techniques of his own invention.
- He was a child prodigy.
- He's an important Argentine painter and multifaceted artist.
- He wrote, together with the Argentinean painter Luis Felipe Noé, father of the director Gaspar Noé, the script 'Recontrapoder'.
- He defined himself as "Stateless".
- In 2005 he founded the Infinilogy movement.
- Not even I am in the middle of the world. I am exiled of the world. Only discover aggression and lack of elegance. The elegance, that is to have an attitude, I do not speak of opinion but a way to walk, an inescapable singularity in one same one.
- I am against dualism, the idea that everything has to be one thing or another. Why should we be stuck in a system? People should be able to see the different tones in reality, not just black or white. I try to find the point where the objective and subjective disappear.
- Actually, I don't believe in the word "creation". What I do is not really create something, but rather, combine the experiences I see in my life. I take a look at the world, and a look inside myself, and combine both.
- Perhaps birth is a funny mistake. Like the story about the earthworm that entered in a noodle bowl because thought it was an orgy.
- People develops a deep philosophy when is trying of justify their own attitudes.
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