The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight and feeling its resistance against her wings, might imagine that its flight would be freer still in empty space.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
We chafe against constraint, and grasp eagerly promises of liberation we are offered from the limits which bound and restrict us. A certain kind of politics loves to make such promises, as do advertising and technology. Sometimes we believe them, and sometimes we don't (and much of the time either we’ve just been disappointed or we’re about to be disappointed). Art, however, which mostly doesn’t even trouble to make any promises, seems to command an undimmable faith as a great liberator, a genuine home and source of freedom. Art is freedom, supposedly. Imagination and creativity lead out beyond the bounds of the real and the actual, opening up new worlds of possibilities free from any limit or constraint. Artists on the other hand know quite well that this picture is misleading. Kant’s insight holds for art as it does for doves. Freedom in art is not freedom from all limit. The same constraints which bound and limit our possibilities are part of the conditions of our having possibilities at all. Art has always required some resistance against its wings, and in the absence of that resistance art becomes impossible. Far from being an exercise in the absence of limits, art is in permanent negotiation with its limits. Whatever they are - formal, technical, aesthetic, material, conceptual, just to name a few - art might stay within them, stray beyond them, contest them, or play with them, but the one thing it never fails to do is deal with them. One purpose of Limited is to bring the work of limits in art to the foreground and make it explicit. Limits are too important in art to be left in the background, and too interesting to be appreciated only by artists. The brief for the exhibition therefore imposed upon the artists some strict specifications, as well as inviting them to work within some self-imposed limits of their own. The resulting works serve to demonstrate that far from being an unwanted constraint upon artistic creation, limits belong necessarily to art. Kant’s parable applies beyond art and aviation. Freedom in art is not freedom from all constraint, and neither is freedom in flight - and neither is our own freedom. Liberation from all limits is not freedom, but an illusion of freedom. Our freedom lies within and because of, and not despite, necessary bounds and limits. If a certain kind of politics promises to liberate us from them, we should be on our guard; we do not fly in empty space. D.M. Procida