He’s been compared to artist Francis Picabia, poet Francis Ponge, writer Georges Pérec, and filmmaker Jacques Tati. He’s unquestionably a direct descendant of Marcel Duchamp. With humor, the 47-year-old French artist Franck Scurti doodles, sculpts, films, and recycles objects from daily life, as well as icons, myths, and news stories. Along with Valérie Favre, Bertrand Lamarche, and Dewar & Gicquel, he’s been nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, which will be awarded October 20 at FIAC. ARTINFO France recently sat down with Scurti to talk about his new projects, art historical references in his work, and how he uses language "like infinitely recyclable trash."

What work are you going to show for the Prix Duchamp? A new piece or something you’ve produced already?

I haven’t done a project for the Prix Duchamp. I work every day and I’ve chosen three works that seem to me to make sense together. I selected them from a group of works that I created over the last three months. In fact, I just decided. There are ten days left, but that’s OK.

If you win, you’ll receive €30,000 ($39,000) to produce a piece, which will then be shown at the Pompidou Center. Will this change the economics of your production, which are voluntarily rather modest?

No. I work with different economies. When I prepare an exhibition I never think about money. I create and then I decide. The term “production” has gradually replaced “creation,” and facing what I consider to be a crisis of representation, my desire is to reflect, in the wider sense of the word, on the creative process. I work with “poor” means and oppose them to “big productions” and to what I consider to be spectacle.

Visitors to your website have the choice of three different entrances: “Home,” “Street,” or “Museum.” These categories can also be found in your monograph. What is the significance of these categories to your work?

The idea of a cursor moving along a line is the most open form that I’ve been able to find to organize my work thus far. “Home” represents the most biographical part as well as thoughts on my practice, “Street” widens the horizon of inspiration to the external world, and “Museum” is openly linked to the reception of the artworks.

The last pieces you’ve shown look more like “Home.”

Yes, that’s true, but the most recent one is more “Street.”

What makes you choose video, drawing, collage, or sculpture?

Often it’s the idea that leads me to choose a medium. But sometimes it’s the opposite. When I work with found objects, for example.

You’ve said that you are fascinated by the idea of value in art. Could you talk about this a bit?

I don’t see any difference between a stainless steel sculpture and a work that uses found objects. It’s the same act, and they’re the same thing. Judging a work only by its material aspects often means falling into the trap of facile spectacle.

Why are language, titles, and puns so important to you?

A portion of the titles that I’ve given to my works are slogans, phrases borrowed here and there, over time. I use language like infinitely recyclable trash.

You take your subject matter from daily life (images, objects, newspapers), but we can also find more or less explicit references to art history in your work: Manzoni, Robert Watts, and obviously Marcel Duchamp.

Yes. Although I’m not interested in art for art’s sake, I like working on the meaning of my pieces and placing them at a certain level in the discourse on art.

The title and composition of “The Scream” refer to Munch’s famous painting. Are you doing pastiche, parody, or caricature?

None of the above. It’s an adaptation to a truth, that of the time in which we’re living.

I used to go to the Mac/Val contemporary art museum a lot when your work “Reflets,” with its commercial neon signs and slightly deformed logos, was shown there, and I ended up looking at the pharmacy sign below my apartment and thinking, “Hey, a Franck Scurti.” Do you like playing with this confusion between reality and art, in a permanent back-and-forth movement?

Underneath its French Pop appearance, this series is definitely one of the most dialectical that I’ve ever done. A play on the meaning of art and reality. Since then, I’ve designed a dozen different models that I’ve given to a sign factory. The process is similar to that of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in his three “Telephonebilder”: when I need a model, I order it by phone.

If you could save only one or two of the works in your oeuvre, which would you choose and why?

It’s hard to answer, because I work on the whole, on a total oeuvre. If you really examine what I do, you’ll notice that my works sometimes have different styles and appearances but speak to one another.

You’re preparing a solo show at Galerie Michel Rein in Paris. Can you tell us about your most recent work?

Between May and September, I also focused on the publication of two artist books and a monograph with a major part of my work notes. The exhibition will show these publications as well as a series of drawings influenced by the plates of the 18th-century Dutch zoologist and pharmacist Albertus Seba.

You have denied having a style. What bothers you about this idea?

I really think that things are happening elsewhere today. Don’t you kind of feel as if you’ve seen everything? The phrasing is more important than the style, I believe.

To see an archive of all of ARTINFO's interviews with the 2012 Prix Duchamp nominees, click here.