On entering the room I was overcome by relief. What was displayed before me was comical and exuded something promptly understandable: four hollow plinths made out of flat white panels elevating four ceramic vases. The vases, covered with a milky white glaze, were each upside down. Faces were outlined on them in a few brushstrokes of black lacquer. One of them had wavy lines that flowed down its cheeks from a pair of empty eyes; some had wrinkles drawn across their foreheads; and most of the mouths were straight or slightly frowning, as if reflecting on a serious situation or feeling of despair. The painted faces turned the vases into elongated, pear-shaped heads, sometimes with handle ears, sometimes without. two large collages were also displayed in the gallery, each of which depicted a figure made of grey folds with a scribbled-on face. They looked like a pair of anthropomorphised laptops, male and female respectively. The light grey screens were their head and chest, while the dark grey keyboards formed the rest of their bodies. And so we saw this pair, sitting there in the slumped position created by the laptop's half-open angle, with empty gazes, ink-drawn hands in their laps, beige packing-paper legs dangling, thick lacquer curls as hair, ink lines shaping a hat. The colour of the works, and the atmosphere they evoked, were restrained and serious. Such was the evocation but not the effect of Exhausted Vases and Waiting Laptops (both 2009) in the show 'some end of things', at Galerie Andreas Huber in Vienna earlier this year.

These sculptures and collages at once seemed to me like the punch line to my state