Drawings

Recent drawings include boxers, football goalkeepers, and anthropomorphic cats and rabbits, alongside plan drawings for installations. Each captures impulse, play, and imagined scenes that later unfold in larger works.

Referee Stop #1《レフリーストップ #1》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop #2《レフリーストップ #2》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop #3《レフリーストップ #3》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop #4《レフリーストップ #4》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop #5《レフリーストップ #5》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop #6《レフリーストップ #6》, 2024
Colored pencil on paper
38 × 27 cm
Photo: © Takehiro Iikawa, courtesy of the artist

Referee Stop

This work depicts the moment in a boxing match when the referee intervenes to stop the fight after one boxer has been overwhelmed. The artist focuses on the referee’s gestures at this decisive instant—gestures that stand in contrast to the strict enforcement of rules and encouragement of aggressive action that characterized the referee’s behavior throughout the match.

Even as the boxer may still show readiness to fight, the referee lowers his hand and shakes his head. Sometimes he places a hand on the boxer’s shoulder or speaks to him. These brief actions are at once official acts of restraint and fleeting, intimate exchanges between referee and fighter. Yet what the referee is truly thinking in that moment remains unknowable to the spectators. He may simply be carrying out his duty dispassionately, or he may be moved by complex feelings toward the fighter. The act of stopping a match is not merely a matter of technical control but contains a weight of judgment that resists easy interpretation.

The inspiration for this work is rooted in a personal experience. The artist’s father was a former boxer, a certified referee, and a trainer. While officiating a match in which one of his trainees was competing, he sensed the fighter’s exhaustion but hesitated to stop the bout, hoping the boxer could endure until the decision. The fighter later collapsed after the match and died.

Through this event, the artist became increasingly aware of the referee’s decisions and movements while watching combat sports. In this series, the focus is placed on the “momentary human relationship” that can arise in the course of the referee’s duty, and on the gravity of the judgment inherent in the act of stopping a fight.

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