Heading several islands in the virtual universe of Second Life, which he has turned into global art pieces, Moya will directly sell, through the Haussmann agency specialized in luxury real estate, land, villas, and other virtual offices (some of which are already reserved) to all those who wish to come tonight…
In RL (Real Life), at 12 quai Papacino, or in SL (Second Life), in the virtual office of Haussmann agency that Moya has set up on his island.
Price range:
– from 200 euros for a villa or a corporate headquarters
– between 10 and 100 euros for a virtual sculpture signed by Moya
Will the future of real estate pass through the virtual?
Patrick MOYA. Artist, lives and works in Nice … and on Second Life.
From large steel sculptures erected in Asia to small ceramic beds modeled in Italy, from paint brushes to computers, from techno parties to the walls of a chapel, from contemporary art to digital art, even “post-digital”, Patrick Moya is everywhere. An invasive and unique approach that uses his name and image as a pretext.
Born in 1955 in Troyes, Patrick MOYA studied at the Villa Arson in Nice before posing nude as a model at the Fine Arts for ten years to “become the creature and not the creator”. Because he read McLuhan, and ponders with him the changes brought to the history of art by new media: “with ubiquity media, like live television, the creator no longer has time to tell the history of art; to exist, he must become the creature.”
After this long episode where he is just a “passive creature,” a sort of Narcissus letting himself be admired and live in the gaze of others, he truly starts his work at 30, making up for lost time by now devoting his entire life to art: he begins by playing with the letters of his name in a thousand ways, making the work synonymous with his signature, before creating (in 1996) his character, an offset self-portrait soon surrounded by an almost human menagerie.
Two years later, “Dolly”, the sheep-mascot of the famous techno party Dolly Party, was born, enriching his universe. In June 2007, he completed the chapel that bears his name in Clans (a small hilltop village in the Alpes Maritimes), after 4 years of work and in February 2009, he was able to parade on “his” first float, designed for the Nice carnival.
Meanwhile, Moya erected large steel sculptures in Asia and modeled small ceramic beds in Italy, passing with virtuosity from brushes to computers, from contemporary art to digital and even “post-digital” art.
Because refusing to be limited, Moya wants to be everywhere, to touch everything: as early as 1985, he used an MO5 computer to write his name, and soon, he was creating images and then 3D films, in which he reinvented his universe.
One understands why a virtual world like Second Life was just waiting for Moya, unless it was the other way around!
On the virtual island he owns in this 3D web, the creator has finally become a creature under the name of his avatar, Moya Janus, who welcomes his visitors by immersing them in his universe. After giving his name to this island, he turned it into a “small dictatorship of art” entirely dedicated to Moya: old Moya village, Moya Chapel, Moya museums, Moya Biennale, Moya shops, Moya Hospital, and Moya Tower, squares, and Moya streets, not forgetting some “anti-Moya” protesters massed at the border of Moya land… And in which Moya Janus, dressed in a suit tagged with the letters of his name, remixes his past and present works, real and virtual.
Conceived as a global art piece, it is the culmination of an invasive approach that has become immersive.
Is Moya “one of the great pioneers of digital universes,” as critic Mario Gerosa, a specialist in virtual worlds and editor-in-chief of AD magazine, who organized in Florence, Italy, the first major exhibition presenting “art in Second Life” writes?
Titled “Rinascimento Virtuale”, this exhibition was held until January 2009 in the city’s anthropology museum of the Renaissance: an entire room was dedicated to the “Moya civilization”, highlighting the rich journey of a complete artist, capable of transitioning without a break from traditional painting on the walls of a Catholic chapel to its reproduction in 3D in a virtual world, in which he lives a “second life” as a Creature playing at being an Artist!
