Patrick Moya

Patrick Moya (born 1955 in Troyes, France) is a Southern French artist. He lives in Nice on the French Riviera. Moya has been at the forefront since the 1970's in straddling the latest forms of media and technology. He is an early pioneer of video art in the metaverse, working on Second Life since July 2007.

Career
Moya moved to Nice at the age of fifteen.

He studied Fine Arts at the Villa Arson for three years. Inspired by the theory of Marshall McLuhan, he invented a TV show called Bonzour Bonzour where he is a TV artist. It was his first experimentation in video art. For ten years, he was hired as a nude model for the art students. In the early 1980s, he started assimilating his signature into his artwork. For example, in 1991 he built a steel sculpture in Taiwan with the four letters of his name during a sculpture symposium for the garden of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1997 he created his first alter ego, a caricatural self-portrait inspired by the character of Pinocchio which allows him to represent himself in his works. His personal universe appeared with the creation of Dolly in 1999, a character inspired by the famous cloned sheep Dolly.

1996, he made his first exhibition in a museum for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice.

Moya has been a digital artist since his early work using computers in the mid-80. Since 2007, he's been the owner of the virtual Moya Land in the 3D web of Second Life.

In summer 2011, the story of Moya civilization was depicted on the walls of the La Malmaison art center in Cannes. This exhibition allowed visitors to meet the artist from a distance and ask questions.

In December of 2015, he returned to his hometown of Troyes for an installation, where he painted the entire exhibition on the walls of the Maison du Boulanger murals which would be removed at the end of the exhibition.

Then, Moya was chosen by the curator of the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, Peter Assmann, for a major monographic exhibition in the cantina, under the title "Il laboratory della metamorfosi" (the laboratory of metamorphoses).

In December of 2017, a big retrospective in the "Espace Lympia", with the support of Alpes Maritimes department, a big retrospective in the "Espace Lympia" with the title "Le Cas Moya / l’exposition" was set up in Nice. The scenography of the exhibition presented all the different sides of his universe, depicting its history; from its infancy to the metaverse.

In 2018, Moya exhibited at the Palazzo Saluzzo Paesana, Torino, Italy.

In 2019, Moya exhibited several large-format paintings, a series of neo-classical portraits in reference to the house of Borboun, as well as videos showing his virtual universe, at the Royal Palace of Caserta for one month.

After the inauguration of "the New Moya Chapel" in June of 2019, a little chapel with painted walls and ceiling in the village of Le Mas, he painted in situ, an ephemeral mural on the walls of a room of the Massena Museum in Nice, as part of a famous local gallery owner.

In November of 2020, a new exhibition "La Télé de Moya" (The Moya TV) showed his first projects and theories about live television as the future of art at the L'Artistique art center in Nice.

In 2022, a new biography called "Le Cas Moya", (the Case for Moya) was published, which proved the coherence of his work.

For the spring/summer collection 2023 of Baby Dior, he signed with Christian Dior Couture for the creation of a rabbit and an original calligraphy for the name of DIOR. The magazine Avenue Montaigne announced: "In collaboration with the French artist Patrick Moya, Baby Dior presents a resolutely pop capsule. Inhabited by the singular and plural aesthetics of the visual artist-performer from Nice, the creations feature a cheerful pink rabbit celebrating the Chinese zodiac sign of the year 2023".

On June 16 of 2023, the inauguration of Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, a resin sculpture 240cm high was officially installed on Place du Pin.

In the virtual world
Since 1985, he's been making digital art using a Thomson MO5. He also used celluloid as medium on which to scratch his name and play it back as film. He uses computers in his art, making 3D images and videos until 2007, when he discovered the "Second Life" environment where he built his new Moya Land, which allowed it so spread to the virtual frontier.

In October of 2008, he participated in an international exhibition called "Rinascimento virtuale" (Virtual Renaissance), initiated by the Italian journalist Mario Gerosa, which took place in the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in the city of Florence in Italy, where an entire room was devoted to the "Moya civilization".

Since 2008, he was considered a digital artist.

Today, Moya is very active in the virtual world; using his avatar, he answers to journalists and students, participates in and organizes many virtual exhibitions. He also receives visitors worldwide, who are given a tour guide in a virtual car.

Since 2009, he's been hosting "the Cyber Carnival" every year in partnership with the Nice Tourism Office. During the Covid 19 health crisis, the 2021 edition of the Nice carnival was cancelled, but it was possible to experience a virtual version of this carnival in the virtual Moyaland.

Artworks
Moya is a prolific artist touching on everything from live painting, ceramics, computers, drawings, fashion art, muralism, painting, projection art, sculpture and video art. His works have been inventoried at catalogue raisonné which contains over 4500 pieces from the span of 40 years between 1971 and 2011. His work has been plastered on the city of Cannes's public transport system's mini-buses, on cars, cows in cow parades and cowbells, on designer clothes and promotional USB cards issued by Cannes's Hotel Martinez, as well as France's famous Guide Michelin. He has also designed dolls for UNICEF. Moya is one of the very few modern artists to be commissioned to paint a Catholic church, dedicated to Saint Jean Baptiste in Clans.

His frescos can be found in public buildings in Monaco, namely the Princess Grace hospital, in the La Bourgade college in La Trinité, in Pasteur 2 Hospital, and in two "Moya chapels" and in the villages of Clans and Le Mas.

Some personal exhibitions

 * 1987 : « Les Caprices de Moya », Galerie municipale des Ponchettes, Nice, France
 * 1995 : « The sculpture exhibition of Moya », Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan
 * 1996 : « MOYA-MOYA », MAMAC, Nice, France
 * 2003 : « L'Arsenal de Moya », Rétrospective, L'Arsenal, Metz, France
 * 2006 : « L'Arche de Moya », Toit de la Grande Arche de La Défense, Paris, France
 * 2011 : « La Civilisation Moya », Centre d'art La Malmaison, Cannes, France
 * 2013 : "Moya in the classics", Radium art Center, Busan, South Korea
 * 2013 : « L'Universo Moya a Dronero », Teatro Iris, Dronero, Italy
 * 2015 : "Moya en abondance", Collégiale St Pierre-la-Cour, Le Mans, France
 * 2015 : « Moya Circus », Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (MAC 3), Caserta, Italy
 * 2015 : "Moya", Miller White Fine Arts, Cape Cod, USA
 * 2016 : « Il laboratoire delle metamorfosi », Cantina, Palazzo ducale, Mantoux, Italy
 * 2016 (juin/août) : Voyage au Moya Land, Château Madame de Graffigny, Villers-lès-Nancy
 * 2017/2018 (décembre/mars) : Le cas Moya, l'exposition, Galerie Lympia (Espace Culturel Départemental, Conseil Départemental 06), Nice
 * 2018 (avril) : Dolly mon amour, Palazzo Saluzzo Paesana, Turin (Italie)
 * 2019 (mars) : Moya Royal Transmedia, Reggia di Caserta, Caserta (Italie)
 * 2020 (juin-novembre) : La Collection Moya, musée Masséna, Nice (France)
 * 2020/2021 : (28 novembre 2020 / 4 décembre 2021), La Télé de Moya, centre d'art L’Artistique, Nice.

Philosophy
Moya works in a "tree structure", working between real work and the virtual world in an invasive and immersive approach that takes its name and image as a pretext. He has a goal of becoming "a creature who lives in his work", a goal achieved in 2007 through his avatar when he moved to Second Life, where he reconstructed his artistic universe in the 3D form, becoming one of the first metaverse artists. Moya's maxim has been "to please everybody while remaining avant-garde; to be everywhere without wasting oneself; to touch each medium while staying perfectly recognizable". He credits his time as a nude model for his healthy degree of exhibitionism and narcissism that gets duplicated as his cartoon alter ego. The result is art that crosses generations and genders. His work is often described as positive and jubilant.

Charity
Moya has participated in projects to benefit AIDS in Monaco, and UNICEF.