Writing and Reviews

By Bart Gazzola
Saskatoon based artist, critic, and curator.

To make work about male identity in the contemporary Canadian art world is to invite ridicule (at best), dismissal (the standard) or accusations of “sexism” or “misogyny” (dirty words in the current dogma). But the works presented by Clint Neufeld in “Grandpa used to washed my hands in gasoline” are both beautiful objects, and very meaningful objects, and they speak to notions of art making, beauty, and identity politics on both a national – and very regional – level: and all very much situated from a masculine place. [Read More]

By Heather White
(Toronto-based writer, editor, and curator)

The original Mme Récamier was a real woman—Juliette—whose portrait was painted by neoclassical master Jacques-Louis David in 1800. In the painting, her figure relates exquisitely to the chaise longue she graces; their lines follow each other like skates. Their congruence is so striking, and became so iconic, that the name is now an eponym: récamier now designates the type of couch Récamier adorned. Language immortalized the quiet symbiosis between person and thing.

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By Jeanie Riddle
Director of the Parisian Laundry Gallery in Montreal Qc.

For his solo exhibition at Parisian Laundry, Saskatchewan based sculptor Clint Neufeld continues to find beauty in the banal while interrupting gendered stereotypes of male identity. Two delicate ceramic cast sculptures of car engines and eight car transmissions will be installed throughout the gallery. Nostalgia and memory play a key roll and act as the contextual impetus behind these aesthetic objects, rendering them useless of their design. They present a dichotomy of a romantic tension of memory and masculine and feminine clichés – delicate motif and car envy. Starting from the personal, Neufeld minds his regional prairie past and relationships with male figures in his life. Men who were not necessarily there emotionally but who, in their ways and language connected the artist to time and observing the extraordinary in the everyday.
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By Jen Budney
Associate Curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, SK.
write up from “Flatlanders” Saskatchewan artist on the horizon catalogue 2008

Clint Neufeld’s sculptures involve an intricate play between contradictory forms, materials, and purposes. For the last few years, since graduating with an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal, Neufeld has been working with the most “Saskatchewan” of forms: engines, excavating buckets, and other mechanical devices that are employed with great frequency throughout the province. Yet, unlike the real objects, Neufeld’s sculptures are not made with industrial materials. Rather, they are lovingly handcrafted from such substances as porcelain and wax.
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Clint Neufeld: The Difference Engines

By Leah Sandals, for Canadian Art Magazine

Over the past five years, the ceramic engine sculptures of Saskatchewan artist Clint Neufeld have won increasing recognition in the Canadian art world. In addition to being featured in MASS MoCA’s upcoming “Oh, Canada” show this spring, Neufeld has had solo exhibitions at public art galleries across the country and was first runner-up for the 2011 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics. [More]

Not Your Grandma’s China

By Elana Scherr, Hot Rod Magazine

Clint Neufeld told us he doesn’t consider himself a mechanic, saying his cast-ceramic engines and transmissions are artworks about memory and masculinity. We’ll save that conversation for the art magazines. What interested us about the Canadian sculptor’s work was the build process [More] …