For the 25th anniversary of Pinocchio the Big Fag premier at NYC's the Drawing Center (and for its serendipitous inclusion in the Drawing Centers' As If show curated by Giampaolo Bianconi), Keith Mayerson and his designer friend Grace Pak have assembled, for the first time, the original script that was the inspiration for the many drawings and paintings for this show, Mayerson's debut in the art world, that follows his version of the Pinocchio, as if it had existed alongside the original C. Collodi version, and that some gay collector had collected the original illustrations from various tomes and animated versions and put them all together again. "Pinocchio the Big Fag" is a kind of a no-holds barred, over-the-top, quasi-Gesamtkunstwerk" (San Francisco Examiner), "Pinocchio the Big Fag" happily inverts the Pygmalion myth lying underneath Collodi's book. Mayerson's Pinocchio fights for control of the sexualtiy constructed for him by his Creator, because at stake for the marionette is the chance to surrender control to his own desires" (Artforum), "Mayerson brings innocence and experience together in a hilarious, phantasmagoric series of drawings that recast the tale of the puppet Pinocchio as a picaresque journey of growing up homosexual in a homophobic society. Much of the narrative looks like a pornographic, head-comics version of children's book illustrations; Gepetto is now a John Wayne butch type, and Pinocchio's fabled extended nose assumes a new, erogenous identity. Mr. Mayerson's most ingenious achievement, though, is his stylistic takeoff on the actual pages from Blake's "Songs," complete with illustrations and verses not suitable for a family newspaper" (NY Times). The book is in full color, complete with all the original artworks and more!