JOHN HEJDUK - "Born in New York in 1929 into a family of Czech origin and a successful practitioner right from his debut years in the 1950s, this architectural Magritte was calculatedly casual in his manipulations of shadow-line poetics. Far from being a form of renunciation, his pessimism was almost cruel in its insistence that any true piece of architecture is a memento mori with enigmatic, even surreal overtones. As stripper-off of masks and slayer of Medusas, Hejduk forced us to contemplate the ruin of rational thought by using his drawings and poetry to build an eternal home for the inhabitant who refuses to take part." Abitare (10/2000)LAST WORKS / LAST RITES - K. Michael Hays (ed.), Sanctuaries: The Last Works of John Hejduk (New York: Abrams/Whitney Museum, 2003) - Catalogue for the 2002-2003 exhibition at the Whitney (New York) - Cloth, 104 pages, ISBN 0-874-27129-0 / EARLY / MIDDLE WORKS - Thomas Boga (ed.), John Hejduk: Works 1950-1983 (Zurich: ETH, 1983) - Exhibition catalogue (November 4 through December 1, 1983) - Oversized folio - “Texas.Series Houses” (1950s-1960s): “¼ Series.House No. 1”, 1967 (Ontological operations at the crossroads of misrepresentation) - “Phase V” (1973-75): “Fabrications” (The launch into the mytho-poetic); “Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought” (Venice Biennale, 1975); “Cross House”, 1978
Image (previous) -- House of the Suicide @ Prague Castle Gardens
Image (left) -- House of the Mother of the Suicide @ The Whitney (09/2002)
Image (following) -- House of the Mother of the Suicide @ The Whitney (09/2002)