Gants de boxe was produced as part of the group exhibition La Norme et le caprice. Quartiers d’hiver (Espace 251 Nord, Liège, 1992) curated by Laurent Jacob. It is part of a series developed from combat sports accessories on which the artist has painted motifs. For this piece, he uses a cross-shaped sign taken from the iconographic repertoire of Byzantine art, found notably on the vestments of saints. Gants de boxe” crosses several references, Eastern Christian art of course, but also a topographical marker I’d observed on Mount Athos, which uses a black target on a yellow background; for me, this implies the notion of the geography of a place, a clue to understanding distance and space. There’s also the question of the ready-made, with the choice of a manufactured object that has a strong presence. I wanted to bring very different registers into confrontation, and use the semantic, visual and physical relationships they might have. For me, there’s a fruitful relationship to be established between the very popular character of combat sports and the deep spirituality to which the religious motifs I use are linked.” Gants de boxe also responds to specific installation requirements. Like all the pieces in the series, it is housed in a beechwood frame built into a corner between two walls. Once again, this is a way of confronting influences: contemporary art, with works such as those by Dan Flavin, and icons, which can be protected in boxes and positioned in a corner “because that’s where evil hides… and then the corner is also the space in the ring where the opponent retreats when he’s in trouble”. Kozakis (Pierre Henrion)