UNTITLED

“I was thinking of L.A. when I came up with this idea,” says British artist Gillian Wearing of her show at Regen Projects (regenprojects.com; ends Aug. 23). “L.A. being the place of dreams and transformations.”

Her idea was to take average people and transform them into sexy pinups. But to do that she had to first find subjects (all -- including men -- responded to an ad on a British website), give them Playboy-style photo shoots and then work with retouchers to perfect their features. “I was looking at Vargas a lot,” she explains. “He always improved the models he painted.”

Finally, she hired airbrush artist Jim Burns, known for his sci-fi fantasy images, to transform each rendering into large-scale paintings. That brought each “back to life,” as Wearing says, “making it far more seductive than a photograph.”

Like many of Wearing’s artworks, including her “Family Values” at Regen Projects II, the result underscores the thorny nature of representation -- especially when you contrast the final image with the submission photos and letters accompanying each painting. There, viewers will find a wealth of loneliness and self-criticism. “I was surprised by the amount of insecurities,” she says. “But maybe those who push themselves toward things that are in front of the camera come from a place where they are looking to improve themselves.”

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-- theguide@latimes.com