Patrick Moya
Encyclopedia
Patrick Moya
Patrick Moya is a Southern French artistArtist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, born in 1955 in Troyes
Troyes
Troyes is a commune and the capital of the Aube department in north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about southeast of Paris. Many half-timbered houses survive in the old town...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
living in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
. He is a part of the Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
movement, the new wave of the École de Nice (Nice School). Moya has been at the forefront since the 1970s of straddling the latest forms of media and technology to benefit art rather than rendering it extinct. He is an early pioneer of video art.
Early Life and Career
Moya arrived in Nice at the age of fifteen. He studied Fine Arts at the Villa ArsonVilla Arson
The Villa Arson, also referred to as the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts à la Villa Arson , is a French art museum, elite school and research institution for contemporary art, located in Nice, France...
for three years. He hosted a program on student radio called Bonzour Bonzour. He was later hired as an artists' model, posing nude for ten years for the art students at the Beaux-Arts. At age 15 also, Moya only took on his Catalan surname following the late marriage of his parents. This spawned the practice of using the letters of his name in his art which he has put on as many surfaces as possible, often in the background of his paintings or in sculpture, in a celebratory way which has become his trademark. Being a model meanwhile taught him to objectify himself so he could later insert himself as the medium in his own work after realizing that "with the ubiquity of broadcast media, the creator had to invent himself as a creature" to ride out and embrace New Media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
. He was greatly influenced by McLuhan's Global Village
Global Village
Global Village is an Australian television show broadcast by the Australian public broadcaster SBS. The program is hosted by Silvio Rivier, who also does many of the voice overs. In 2008 it combined with Thalassa, a French documentary series, to expand its coverage of coastal areas.Global Village...
. Very early on in the 1970's, he began experimenting with video art. He launched a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, named Reptile au Style. In the 1980s, he began making digital using a Thomson MO5
Thomson MO5
The Thomson MO5 was a 6809E-based computer introduced in France in 1984. It featured 32 KB of RAM, a 40×25 text display, and built-in Microsoft BASIC. The MO5 was replaced by the MO6 in 1986.-External links:...
and conjugating the word as art in Verbes d'État. He also used celluloid as medium on which to scratch his name and play it back as film art/art film. In 1982, he was launched as a solo artist by his mentor, Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
Director of Museums Claude Fournet. His later use of 3D
3D
3D or 3-D may refer to:*Three-dimensional space, the physical universe*Stereoscopy, any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image-Music:*3D...
has seen him birthe new worlds along with the creation in 1996 of his cartooned manga alter ego crossed with Pinocchio, Petit Psy. Today, he relishes the "Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
" environment where he has built Moya Land and by extension, has spread the Moya label to the virtual frontier. He regularly includes live and interactive performances between him and the public, using the virtual environment and has done collaborations with Thierry Mugler
Thierry Mugler
Thierry Mugler is a French fashion designer and creator of several perfumes.-Childhood:Mugler was born in Strasbourg, France on 21 December 1948. His passion led him to focus more on drawing than on school and at the age of 9, he began to study classical dance...
and Yves Saint-Laurent
Yves Saint-Laurent
Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, known as Yves Saint Laurent , was a French fashion designer, one of the greatest names in fashion history...
. Music also plays a role; another character he has developed in his art, Dolly the Sheep, has her namesake techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
dance beach parties, popular on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
and Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...
. Moya has exhibited widely in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
.
Artworks
Moya is a prolific artist touching on everything from art films, billboard art, ceramics, computerComputer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
or web art, conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, drawings, fashion
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
art, muralism, painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, projection art, sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
- up to now. His body of work has been inventoried in a catalogue raisonné
Catalogue raisonné
The typical catalogue raisonné is a monograph giving a comprehensive catalogue of artworks by an artist.The essential elements of a catalogue raisonné are that it purports to be an exhaustive list of works for a defined subject matter describing the works in a way so that they may be reliably...
that comprises over 4500 pieces in the span of 40 years between 1971 and 2011. His work has been plastered on the city of Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
's public transport system's mini-buses, on Smart cars, on cowbells, on designer clothes and promotional USB cards issued by Cannes's Hotel Martinez
Hôtel Martinez
The Hôtel Martinez is a famous art deco style Grand Hotel on the Croisette at Cannes. It was opened on 20 February 1929 by its founder-owner Emmanuel Michele Martinez, son of the Baron Giovanni Martinez and Giuseppa Labiso Costanza, from Palermo Sicily, Italy, a noble ancient Italian family of...
, as well as France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan 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
Saint-Jean-Baptiste
Saint-Jean-Baptiste is a neighbourhood of Quebec City, the capital of the province of Quebec in Canada. It is known for its shopping and restaurants....
in Clans. His frescoes can be found in public buildings in Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
, namely the Princess Grace hospital.
Philosophy
Moya's maxim has been "to please everybody while remaining avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
; 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
Exhibitionism
Exhibitionism refers to a desire or compulsion to expose parts of one's body – specifically the genitals or buttocks of a man or woman, or the breasts of a woman – in a public or semi-public circumstance, in crowds or groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers...
and narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
that gets duplicated as his cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
. The result is art that crosses generations and genders. His work is often described as positive and jubilant.
Charity
Attuned to everything and everyone around, Moya has participated in projects to benefit AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, and UNICEF.