Literature: Gitte Ørskou (ed.): “Michael Kvium - A retrospective”, Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich, Schweiz 2020, reproduced p. 90. Exhibited: “Silent Eye - New works by Michael Kvium”, Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen 19 January-15 July 2007, reproduced in the catalogue p. 53, pl. 05. Exhibited: “Kvium Collected - en samlers passion”, Otterup Geværfabrik, 12 June-15 August 2021, reproduced in the catalogue p. 26. Provenance: Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. Previously on loan to KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg.

“'Lunch I' and 'Lunch II' are the titles of two works from 2006 in which the landscape has totally engulfed two sheep in one green and one red landscape, conjured up in vivid psychedelic colors devoid of any horizontal line or further anchoring. The title is a humorous homage to Édouard Manet's iconic 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (1862–63): one of the masterpieces of Realism, because for almost the first time in the history of art, the painting struck its audience as 'real' rather than dished up in a distant sphere of symbols. Artistic realism, of which Manet was an exponent, triggered a completely different relationship between paintings and viewers, because the works began to extend into their own, lived reality. Kvium's preoccupation with reality is about breaking down everything he refers to as 'gøglebilleder' (simulacra), in other words, illusions or mirages - all the bulwarks we establish for ourselves in order to comprehend the world. But in 'Lunch I' and 'Lunch II', everything is turned upside down. The actual motif, the sheep, is the carnivore's lunch, standing with its back to us, apparently safe and unaware in the startling pictorial space”. (Gitte Ørskou quoted from the above mentioned book, p. 90)