This exhibition begins with The Adventures of Pinocchio, not as a children’s fable, but as a philosophical narrative about the human desire to become “real.” Through the work of Alessandro Del Pero, Collodi’s universe is displaced into a contemporary psychological landscape shaped by projection, performance, seduction, and longing.

In Collodi’s story, Pinocchio is not simply a puppet trying to become human. He is a figure suspended between invention and authenticity, between performance and truth. His journey reveals that becoming “real” is never natural or immediate; it is shaped through morality, language, obedience, affection, deception, and recognition. To become real is therefore less a transformation than a condition imposed by society and by the gaze of others.

The exhibition approaches these characters as psychological and contemporary archetypes that continue to structure human relationships. Pinocchio becomes the unstable self, constantly negotiating between sincerity and performance. The Fox and the Cat embody systems of manipulation that survive through desire, ambition, and illusion. Geppetto represents the fragile line between love and possession, creation and control.

At the center of these dynamics stands the Blue Fairy. More than a character, she becomes a projection: the fantasy that another person can redeem us, complete us, or finally make us whole. The title, “The Blue Fairy Syndrome”, refers to this persistent condition—the tendency to place the possibility of transformation outside ourselves, often onto the image of the other.

Within the exhibition, Del Pero constructs immersive environments in which light itself becomes an essential material. The works are installed like suspended interior scenes, crossed by luminous openings that resemble windows, thresholds, or apparitions. Light does not simply illuminate the figures; it produces a psychological atmosphere, oscillating between intimacy and estrangement, revelation and theatricality.

Throughout the exhibition, light also assumes a symbolic and conceptual role. For Del Pero, the Talking Cricket is no longer represented as a physical figure, but as light itself: an immaterial presence that functions as conscience, intuition, or inner voice. In several works, an intense luminous presence appears alone within the space, transforming light into a form of psychological tension — silent, watchful, and impossible to fully escape.

Hybrid bodies recur throughout the exhibition: animal figures inhabiting human forms, suspended between instinct and consciousness, myth and reality. These fragmented presences evoke a condition of unstable identity, where the boundaries between the human, the symbolic, and the performative begin to dissolve. Like Pinocchio himself, these beings exist in a space of continuous becoming.

The works presented in the exhibition do not attempt to retell Pinocchio. Instead, they examine how identity itself is constructed through fiction, longing, imitation, and the desire for recognition. Here, lies are not simply moral failures; they become part of the language through which individuals shape themselves and navigate the world.

What emerges is not a moral lesson about good and evil, but a reflection on the instability of human identity. Why do we continue to perform versions of ourselves in order to appear authentic? Why does the promise of becoming “real” remain so seductive, and so impossible to fully attain?

Perhaps Pinocchio’s condition is not exceptional at all. Perhaps it is simply what it means to be human.