"Cro-Magnon Bacchus," a 2006 painting by Robert Feintuch, senior lecturer in art and visual culture.

The major German newspaper Berlin Zeitung reviewed a gallery exhibition in Berlin by Robert Feintuch, a member of the Bates art faculty whose portraits of men offer wry explorations of powerlessness and vulnerability.

Feintuch shows “thought-provoking, memorable, otherworldly lit, photorealistic — and at the same time surreal — scenes of powerless fighters, of brutes sinking in bed,” Ingeborg Ruthe wrote in the April 18 edition. Senior lecturer in art and visual culture at Bates, Feintuch showed recent work Feb. 18-April 28 at Berlin’s prestigious Akira Ikeda Gallery.

Shown here, the artist’s “Cro-Magnon Bacchus,” Ruthe went on, is “the portrait of an unathletic, rather ectomorphic hen-breasted type . . . What a contrast to the Bacchus motifs of the old masters.”

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.

The exhibits will be on display until Oct. 25. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Included in the faculty exhibit will be the works of multimedia artist Robert Feintuch, photographer Elke Morris, painter and printmaker Donald Lent, ceramicist Paul Heroux and painter Joseph Nicoletti.

“The work of the Bates art faculty is nationally and internationally exhibited, so it is an honor to bring together some of their current work for the public to see,” said Genetta McLean, director of the museum. “A celebration of their teaching is particularly appropriate in the context of the 10th anniversary of the Olin Arts Center.”

The permanent collection highlights will include works by Theodore Rousseau, Marsden Hartley and Paul Cezanne.