n 1998, Franck Scurti, always quick to react to insignifi cant events, ripped up an advertisement from Libération that shows a leaf from a tree and drew on it with a black marker. Initially this gesture evokes the use of advertising in Pop painting and the dissimulation of certain Pop artists behind the cold image of advertising. Wanted! But what are we looking for? Franck Scurti works with accidents and fracture; each of his actions can lead him, by a system of leaps or the association of ideas, toward new projects. Thus, six months later, he reused this spontaneous gesture to create a poster and a handout, “The city is not a tree,” sent anonymously to all the galleries and institutions in Paris, over four months, by a team of four people. Wanted takes as its fi eld of investigation the public space and becomes a parasite with the help of a recurring motif over a given period. It is a project involving uprooting, a metaphor of identity in the image of this leaf fallen from a tree whose veins evoke a thumbprint. To prolong the work, the artist published in 2003 at onestar press a compilation of photographic archives of this project. Wanted has become the non exhaustive inventory of all the city’s palisades, a way to echo the urban rumor contained in this virgin poster of all the inscriptions and to deliver an enigmatic message. The white pages ripped out and inserted between images actualize this documentation while recalling the initial gesture of ripping the page of advertising in Libération. Wanted is the witness of an epoch, an ephemeral project of which the book is the only memory. It’s also the demonstration of an art that can exist outside of museums, galleries and institutions.
Claire Staebler, Paris

Franck Scurti
The city is not a tree
Published April 2003

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