Now open at the art region of MetaLES, is Moya’s Memory, featuring some of the work of French artist Patrick Moya, aka Moya Janus in Second Life.
For those unfamiliar with either name, Patrick Moya is a part of the Nice contemporary art movement, centred on the École de Nice, and he has had a long association with integrating / leveraging technology with and for his art. Within SL his is perhaps best known for Moya Land, his four-region estate dedicated to his work and to “brand Moya”.
The installation at MetaLES is a celebration of Moya’s work, featuring several of his iconic pieces, including a plethora of his cartoon alter-ego. Central to the piece is a large logic circuit, complete with resistors, transistors, DIMM modules and so on, within an around which can be found elements of his art – his aforementioned cartoon alter-ego (as well as his superhero identity) and characters from a number of his pieces and drawings while bespectacled orbs carry the likeness of his face and his name can be encountered again and again.
Given its title, this is an installation that appears to work on several levels. First, and perhaps most obviously, it might be seen as something of a personal retrospective by the artist. Secondly, the use of the circuit board stands an an echo of the manner in which moya embraces the use of technology in his art. Thirdly, the circuit board is itself suggestive of memory – and by extension, the mind – further suggesting that the growth of free artistic expression can oft arise from the ordered (dare I say logical) workings of the human mind.
There’s also, perhaps a small comment on the how the identity of the artist is invested in his or her work; the motifs seen throughout this pieces – particularly the frequent use of his name and the self images or the frequent appearance of Dolly the Sheep, be they taken from the physical world or embodied in the use of Moya’s alter-egos – are far less any form of ego-driven statement, and more a commentary on how the artist is himself perhaps defined by his work.
The motif of mind and art being bound through memory and brain is also repeated elsewhere through the installation, such as in the inclusion of a model of Moya’s physical house, or the model of his cartoon alter-ego, from the head of which bursts forth a fountain of the artist’s drawings.
Moya is a prolific artist, whose work covers multiple mediums and formats; as such, there is perhaps another aspect to any interpretation of this installation: that it is itself a small reflection – an aide memoire, as it were – to the vast catalogue of his work, physical and virtual. The latter aspects can, following a visit to MetaLES be enjoyed through a hop over to Moya Land. In the meantime, Moya’s Memory will be open through until at least the end of February, I believe – so enjoy!
Related links
- Moya’s Memory, MetaLES (Rated: Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 