Art faculty's Feintuch shows paintings at New York's Sonnabend Gallery

Known by student artists at Bates as a mentor, senior lecturer Robert Feintuch enjoys a national reputation as the painter of images simultaneously evocative and quietly deadpan, serious and parodic.

New York’s Sonnabend Gallery is showing recent paintings and drawings by Feintuch through April 30.

Feintuch explores connections and contradictions between classical ideals, psychological desires, intimate life and current events. He uses himself as a model in most of his recent work, though in many of the paintings his face is turned away from the viewer or otherwise obscured. Seen against a plain backdrop, dressed in his underwear, the artist strikes poses that evoke influences ranging from classical mythological and genre paintings to slapstick and newspaper photos.

Most of the positions he takes are choreographed in the studio, on a simple stage-like space reduced to floor and wall. He uses specific poses and objects such as clubs, grapes and furniture as recurring motifs. Combining information drawn from life, using a mirror, and from photographs, Feintuch depicts himself from viewpoints — seen from behind, at a distance or on hands and knees — that fluctuate between objectivity and intimacy, and that are not ordinarily associated with self-portraiture.

Sonnabend Gallery is located at 536 West 22nd St., New York City. Learn more at 212-627-1018 or info@ sonnabendgallery.com.