Dionisio Cañas
BIO
Dionisio Cañas (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1949) is a Spanish poet and artist. He lived in France for nine years and resided in New York from the end of 1972 until 2005; he currently lives in La Mancha. He has been a professor at the City University of New York. In 1986 he met Spanish artists Patricia Gadea and Juan Ugalde. Together they founded the group Estrujenbank. As a member of the group, he published in 1992 a collection of texts: Los tigres se perfuman se perfuman con dinamita. Between 1997 and 2000 he studied photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. His books of poetry include: El fin de las razas felices, El gran criminal, Corazón de perro, En caso de incendio, Videopemas, Y empezó a no hablar, Los libros suicidas (Horizonte árabe) and La noche de Europa. And among the essays Poesía y percepción, El poeta y la ciudad: Nueva York, Memorias de un mirón (voyeurismo y sociedad) and Un viaje hacia El País Invisible: sufismo, erotismo y la búsqueda del Yo. In parallel to his written work, he has created numerous performances with his poems and has not stopped experimenting with video poetry and collage.
Most outstanding exhibitions with the Estrujenbank group.
-March 2005- A sample of Estrujenbank’s work is included in the exhibition Desacuerdos. On art, politics and public sphere in the Spanish State, MACBA, Barcelona, and Centro José Guerrero, Granada.
-June 1992- Estrujenbank presents its Campaign for disinformation and illiteracy, within the Andalusian pavilion of the Universal Exposition of Seville 92, curated by Mar Villaespesa. -April 1992- Collective exhibition at the Instituto de la Juventud: El compromiso del arte (The commitment of art). Participants besides Estrujenbank: Simeón Saiz, Rogelio López Cuenca, Isaac Montoya, Ciucco Gutiérrez, and Pedro G. Romero.
-December 1991- Performance by Estrujenbank at the Atocha subway stop, entitled Campaign for disinformation and illiteracy and Andalusia pavilion of the Universal Exhibition of Seville 92.
-May 1991-Exhibition by Estrujenbank at the Studio Cristofori gallery in Bologna, Italy.
-May 11, 1991- Exhibition CAMBIO DE SENTIDO, in Cinco Casas, a rural town of Ciudad Real, Estrujenbak takes place the exhibition that gathers some of the most committed groups of artists with the political, social and artistic reality of the eighties and nineties of the last century.
-January 1991- Exhibition of the group in the Fundació Caixa de Pensiones of Valencia: Collection 90-91. Catalog with text by Horacio Fernández.
-March 1990- Exhibition of the group at the Xabier Fiol Gallery in Palma de Mallorca. Catalog with the text Una mosca en la leche, by Dionisio Cañas.
-February 1990- ARCO (Contemporary Art Fair of Madrid), Buades Gallery stand.
-December, 1989, Buades Gallery, Madrid.