George Orrimbe

I believe I already wrote a post about my random (or was it? The OuLiPo is against randomness...) encounter with George Orrimbe at Versailles. He is a member of the OuPeinPo (the OuXPo group dedicated to Painting, or Peinture, rather than Littérature like the OuLiPo). Well, he invited me to his exposition twice: the first time to give me a private tour; the second to help him show the new member of the OuLiPo the exposition, a Spanish author named Pablo Martín Sanchez). Let me show you his portraits of the OuLiPo members so you have a better idea of what he does.

Here are some of the portraits. Rather than painting an author based on his looks, he designs these portraits based entirely on the author's published works.

The process is called "vococoloriste" and what it means is that Orrimbe has a system. He chooses a shape based on the number of vowels (voco) in a word and the color based on the first vowel. The color scheme comes from Rimbaud's famous poem "Voyelles" (A noir E blanc I rouge, etc.) Instead of E blanc or white E, he does yellow, so it looks more interesting. 

He picks ten titles of their works to fill in the facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, eyebrows, etc.)

For the entire face, he uses the author's name. 

It's fun to stand in front of a portrait and guess which Oulipian it is, a process that isn't too difficult once one has learned the system and assuming a good knowledge of the Oulipian authors and their works. 

Orrimbe, by the way, is a name he takes from Rimbaud (it is Rimbaud backwards, in the tradition of the French slang called the Verlan). George comes from George Orwell, one of his favorite authors. 

Ultimately, it was a small, but bold exposition. I feel very honored to have been given a private tour by the artist.