"Mystery is the finest of our objects of experimentation.It is the
source of any true art and science ...

A.EINSTEIN.

Jean TRUEL, both a painter and a spelleologist, practises original primordial painting.He is the creator of painting as the water and'earth create the cave.His painting is an exploration of the canvas,and of the pictorial evocative possibilities -real,imaginary or symbolic?of the cavern,in the same way as the speleologist explores, discovers the multisided and undefined space of the cave,and at the same time,his own mental space.Thus the cave is the metaphor of tht skull,and exploring it in paintings is but the imaginary quest of onels mental space.In other words,the cave of the painting is the representation of the origins of painting,namely,the representation of the prehistory of the subject!

In the open,the sunIs light gives stable and definite visibility.Underground,the speleologist carries his own light-on his helmet-which renders the subterranean world visible.The souree of visibility being as mobile as who receives it,what is visible becomes as changing,unstable as the underground journey of the seer,and this phenomenon totally fits the nature of subterranean space:A maze,a decentred space that the explorerls subjectivity organizes into meaning and continuity with his memory.Jean TRUEL thus extracts from hi. expeditions into the heart of earth and from his memory,the revelation of the power of creation of earth and imaginary.

For many years the artist has developped three parallel kinds of practicing:

1)a painting of the cave,i.e. of its walls and rocks,that tends to evoke the flowing of water and the erosion it exerts,or the making o underground shapes and hues.It tends to emphasize,by means of signs and coloured areas,the space presented by the labyrinth of the jourric underground.Ariadnels clew allowing a reunion of those broken and continuous units dwells in the painterls and the attentive onlooker memories.

2)The open "structures, i;e;a painting on fibeo-cement plates dispose on the ground andseparated by emptyspaces in a mazelike way.This other practice is,for Jean TRUEL.intended to match,at groung level, the pictorial work on the volumes of the?cavern.

3)The easel paintings that can either be painted inside the cave or in the painterls studio.They comprise,besides the iconography and th hues of the cave,fragments of fibrocement from the "structures", and photographs of his wall paintings.Here again,the sections retain the m?mory of the globality they come from and that they recall,since every element is conceived in an'organic way.

Whilecrettino,his inspiration from the works of nature,his painting works as nature creates:His works are naturing nature and not natured nature ...

Let's thank Jean TRUEL for presenting the world with the work of the world that bears us from under the ground,and the work of our own universes with its underg?ound motivations!Let's thank hi for giving an opportunity to behold the power of the work of art in the accomplishment of its creation.