SANTA MONICA, CA.- Starting Saturday, October 15th, the Robert Berman Gallery presents Transformation, which features conceptual photography from Robert Heinecken and Victor Landweber.

Transformation is the companion show to Paid to Play, the Robert Berman Gallery’s latest exhibition. Transformation focuses on art that was transformed from commercialism.

In Robert Heinecken’s Recto/Verso photogram portfolio – a single page from a mass circulation magazine depicting women and fashion is placed in direct contact with color photographic paper and exposed to light. The resulting image superimposes the visual and verbal information from the front and back of the magazine page without the use of collage, manipulation or other handwork.

Victor Landweber’s Cherie Holding Colored Cards is a photographic series shot in 1976 juxtaposing nudes with colored card paint samples.

Both series examine sexuality in relationship to consumerist culture and identity in the seventies and eighties as influenced originally by pinup images from the forties and fifties.

Paid to Play - illustrating Los Angeles: 1945 – 1985 is an exhibition that celebrates iconic imagery of the past. This exhibition features artists who earned their living as illustrators. This was a genre looked down upon by many in the art field. Artists who were involved in such commercialism were considered to be “selling out” by many in the fine art world.

However, these artists created memorable works that have stood the test of time. Iconic images such as Playboy, Levi’s, the Rolling Stones, along with major studio films such as American Graffiti and Tron make for a nostalgic exhibition. The artists who created these images dealt with fierce competition as well as intense deadlines. Remarkable images were created, and will forever be associated with this generation.

Paid to Play, which opened in September, is the first of several exhibitions to appear at The Robert Berman Gallery which falls under the umbrella of Pacific Standard Time. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty Foundation, brings together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.

Paid to Play is curated by Robert Berman, Dave Willardson and Charles E. White III and celebrates the many overlooked artists who were commissioned to create imagery for profit. The exhibition is a cross over of collectible art and fine art. It is currently open at the Robert Berman Gallery (C -2).

The Robert Berman Gallery currently has two galleries (a third to be opened in November) at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404.