Referee Stop

Referee Stop depicts the moment a boxing referee catches a dazed fighter in his arms and stops the fight. Until then, he has urged the boxers on—to punch, to keep going. Now, to protect one person, he does the opposite. Right beside the winner's joy, there is another scene altogether.

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 boxer, then a licensed referee and 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 last until the final bell. 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. The series attends to the momentary relationship that can arise in the course of the referee’s duty, and to the gravity of the judgment inherent in the act of stopping a fight.

There are things about Referee Stop you cannot see unless you take the referee’s own position. Is it work, done as a job, or is it something else?

When a fight has to be stopped, there are voices from outside saying he was too slow, or too quick. Inside that, he has to protect the boxer’s life. And the match is also a promoted event; it has to be made exciting. A referee who has spent the whole bout urging the boxers forward has to stop one of them who is close to death. I find that instant of judgment beautiful. But it is not certain.