Portrait of Rimbaud for the Tour 13, Paris 2013

In 2013 Jimmy C was invited to participate in the Tour 13 project in Paris, organised by the Galerie Itinerrance. Artists were invited to create artworks in the former residential apartment building before it was to undergo demolition at the end of 2013. Jimmy created a portrait of the French poet Rimbaud using the four walls of the room to pay homage to the poet through the use of painting, sculpture, and text. Upon entering the room on the left is a cupboard in which we find a young naked man with coloured spheres emanating around him. In this state of introspection the spheres become the colours of his emotions and of his imagination. Facing the viewer is the portrait of Rimbaud with dynamic dashes like sparks of inspiration radiating from the portrait. On the next wall, the painter’s hand becomes that of the composing poet where a line from the pen leads around to excerpts of text from Rimbaud’s The Season in Hell.

Ce fut d'abord une étude. J'écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l'inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges.

It began as a study. I turned the nights and the silences into words, and what was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.   

Enfin ô bonheur, ô raison, j'écartais du ciel l'azur, qui est du noir, et je vécus, étincelle d'or de la lumière nature.

Finally, O reason, O happiness, I cleared from the sky the blue which is of darkness, and I lived as a golden spark from this light of nature.