something leaves the mouth
something returns
something leaves the mouth and something returns are two sculptural works that together evoke a broken conversation.
The works are constructed from two halves of a small table tennis table, each occupying a different position in the space. One extends from the wall, while the other is part of a freestanding sculpture. At its base lie two plaster casts of ping-pong balls, deformed as if they had been chewed and spat out. Red and black rubber is mounted on the undersides of the tabletops, recalling the two sides of a table tennis paddle. Words and fragments of text are cut into the rubber, revealing the contrasting colour beneath: red through black, black through red. Language emerges through both presence and absence: what can be read is also what has been removed.
The sculptures began with two texts written to mirror one another, like two voices in a broken conversation. Something leaves one mouth and enters another. It might make contact, miss its mark, be swallowed, return, or change along the way. The mouth and tongue become both physical materials and sites where language takes shape. The texts play with repetition, onomatopoeia, misspellings, shifts in meaning, and linguistic echoes. A chiasmic movement runs through the works: each side responds to the other, but never as an exact reflection. Instead, language moves back and forth in a kind of verbal game of ping-pong, with meaning constantly shifting in the exchange.
Fragments of the original texts appear within the sculptures. They mark points of impact—moments when something catches or words strike one another. The movement between strike, bounce, and return remains embedded in the material, even as the exchange itself comes to a standstill. What remains is the physical and linguistic trace of an exchange between two sides: a conversation pieced together through absence, in which something leaves one body, strikes another surface, and returns in altered form.
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Part of group-exhibition Dear friend, at Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö, Sweden, 2026.
List of works:
something leaves the mouth – steel, chipboard, silicone rubber, acrylic, screws and nuts, 80x48x2cm, 2026.
something returns – steel, chipboard, rubber, acrylic, plaster, screws and nuts, 150x140x60cm, 2026.