Waters and Beaches

Luca Gansser is the modern nomad. These paintings are the reservoirs of his global experience and exploration. In their realism, they are the records of an archaeologist of cultural fragments; in their fantasy, they are the windows of imagination.

The high water lines of the beach landscapes are the microcosm of civilization discards. They are also a symbol of universal change and time never captured. In these paintings, the formal textural patterns of the earlier work gives way to a thick impasto and an organic texture blended from sand gathered during Gansser’s journeys. The fossils of fish become juxtaposed with the hieroglyphic markings of society carved upon the classic symbol of human invention – the wheel. The recurrent fish imagery has its latest ’life’ in the lead-bound cannon-fish. They are reborn from their fossils into immortal symbols of civilisation, their wheels leading them into a future beyond, their glass eyes seeing into the wooden cast from which their lead bodies emerged.

Sally-Ann Gray, Sydney, 1993