Gabor Szilazi and Les Impatients

Les Impatients is a collaborative photographic project initiated by Montreal photographer Gabor Szilasi. The series includes portraits and self-portraits by members of Les Impatients. Les Impatients: Take 2 presents artmaking as a powerful mode of expression and healing.

Les Impatients is a foundation dedicated to the expression and interpretation of therapeutic art and art brut. Its three Montreal studios are used by persons currently or formerly living with psychiatric difficulties. Les Impatients: Take 2 selects from portraits and self-portraits made in a workshop involving more than ninety participants, under the direction of Gabor Szilasi. Portraits from this project have been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, published in books and journals, and included in the Théatre du Nouveau Monde production of poet Claude Gauvreau’s L’asile de la pureté for the Festival de théâtre des Ameriques (Montreal, 2003)

Gabor Szilasi was born in Budapest in 1928 and immigrated to Canada in 1957. Well known for his photographs of rural Quebec in the 1970s, he has also extensively photographed Montreal’s streets, architecture, and people. Since 1980 he has returned frequently to Hungary to document the changes in his native country. His work has been shown across Canada as well as in the United States, Hungary, Poland, and Italy. Szilasi taight photography at Concordia University from 1980 to 1995 and has been a visiting professor at the Cracow Academiy of Fine Arts and at Stanford University.

Les Impatients, Centre d’expression et d’interprétation de l’art thérapeutique et de l’art brut
Les Impatients: Take 2
Curator and photographer: Gabor Szilasi
September 8, 2005 – November 28, 2005
Monday to Friday 10:00am-5:00pm, Saturday & Sunday 1:00-5:00pm
Opening Monday September 12, 2005 at 5:30pm