WASHINGTON POST - G FINE ART

Dark Displays of the American Dream
G Fine Art Exhibit Bares The Underbelly of Privilege

Saturday, June 9, 2007; C02
By Jessica Dawson for the Washington Post

At G Fine Art, three artists hold a mirror to America the not-so-beautiful. Together they explore opportunism, exploitation and the compulsion to hide dirty secrets under a patina of gentility…

Lisa Marie Thalhammer, the second artist in the show, looks at another group of parking lot denizens — a subculture of hookers called “lot lizards,” who troll truck stops for johns. These ladies of the night are the subject of Thalhammer’s collage drawing series “Welcome to Lizard County.” The artist pieced together images of women’s faces and body parts cut from Playboy and Vogue magazines, among others (many sport nice heels or other designer duds), to make Frankenstein monster-style bodies that the artist places on top of drawings she’s done of the hoods of semis.

The fact that Thalhammer made her lizards out of pictures from magazines shows how women’s bodies are essential fuel for economic engines. The female form becomes a coat hanger — for clothing and, metaphorically, for male fantasies. Thalhammer’s idea is rich…

José Ruiz, Vesna Pavlovic and Lisa Marie Thalhammer at G Fine Art, 1515 14th St. NW, Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m., to July 7. 202-462- 1601, http://www.gfineartdc.com