In each of the Mutants and Venus USA collages, cutouts from fashion catalogs or comic books, break a curtain-like ground made by stroking the page with pastels. The unexpected presence of a disembodied bikini or suspended text bubble is an act of self-sabotage against the mark of the fingers. Floating on abstract grounds, the cutouts gain a formal beauty, which they did not have in their original context, as if they are absorbing something from the rich, velvety quality of the pastels. At the same time, the decontextualized alien images contaminate the strokes of pure color on which they rest.