DETAILS

• Title: 'Lunchbreak'
• Year: 2025
• Dimensions: 43 x 71 inch / 110 x 180cm
• Medium: oil on canvas

ABOUT 

In Lunchbreak, Ellen de Meijer presents a businessman at a public swimming pool during a moment of leisure — conspicuously armed in an otherwise benign setting. The presence of a firearm within this environment of casual recreation destabilizes the scene, transforming an ordinary pause in the workday into a study of latent threat.

The figure’s decision to remain armed suggests both vulnerability and assertion: the weapon functions less as protection than as an emblem of internalized insecurity and culturally sanctioned power. As in much of de Meijer’s work, the protagonist operates as an archetype rather than an individual — embodying a social condition in which authority and anxiety coexist.

The juxtaposition of leisure and preparedness invites reflection on the normalization of violence within contemporary life. In this suspended interval between productivity and rest, Lunchbreak reveals how even moments of supposed relaxation remain structured by systems of control, performance, and defensive posture.

THEMES 

Power · Insecurity · Normalized Violence · Performance · Authority

AVAILABILITY 

Available for institutional exhibition and private acquisition. Currently located in New York City.