Art and finance have always had an indissoluble bond, no great artist of the past would ever have produced the masterpieces that we admire today, if some patron had not financed them. Patronage moved by the most diverse motivations, such as the desire to make clear their power, good investment, and perhaps even the love for art. Even if this is more true for the past, today good investment probably counts more. Well aware that nowadays making money has become perhaps the most creative part of the artist’s work, Federico Paris, in his ironic vision, has launched himself into high finance. He has produced two thousand bearer actions on which appears his self portrait dressed in a barcode shirt and bearing wolf of finance ears. A simple, explicit but also banal iconography explaining how Federico Paris has become a product that should be sold in the best possible way. The self-portraits are all hand-made in stencils and lithographic techniques on a pre-printed piece. The shares are of course not true because Paris is not listed on the stock exchange, but they are limited series numbered and signed, and they respond to the same mechanisms as bearer shares, since their value is susceptible to increases based on market demand and how much collectors are willing to pay for them. This project can be linked to a form of crowdfunding, where the small capitals of many contribute to the creation of large works, or large artistic projects. The biggest partner of this project is PressUp, a giant online digital company that has been sponsoring Paris for several years. A company certainly driven by a passion for art as well as a great intuition for investment.
The Federico Paris joint-stock company does not exist and this is not a real action, you will not be able to join the board of directors of the aforementioned company. This action gives neither privileges nor particular rights, but it is a limited edition work linked to an artistic/financial/creative project and like all works of art its value is susceptible to market demand and to what collectors are willing to pay to have it (just like a real action), the money of this action will be invested to make sure that the aforementioned purchases as much value as possible, which will only happen if the artist Federico Paris can realize as many projects as possible. This is a crowdfunding operation.