LA DACTYLO (1991) - Lot 32

LA DACTYLO (1991) Measure Your Happiness Mixed media, stencil on metal. One-of-a-kind piece. Height: 200 cm; Width: 2 cm. La Dactylo, an urban poet and language artist, transforms public and digital spaces into a vast canvas for artistic expression. Her aphorisms, stenciled on walls or shared online, are acts of poetic resistance aimed at raising awareness and restoring a sense of agency to everyone in the urban landscape. The aphorism is the art of brevity. It’s a stylistic uppercut. It strikes, challenges, makes you smile, seeps into minds, sows doubt, and sparks reflection or awareness. La Dactylo crisscrosses France in her van on what she calls her “Dactylotours,” scattering her words throughout cities. But her work extends beyond the streets: she also exhibits in galleries and at festivals and group shows. Notably, she has participated in Art Paris and taken over a room at the Centre Georges Pompidou for a solo exhibition. Her collection, *Démo d’esprit* (Éditions Verticales, Gallimard), brings together her iconic aphorisms. “Measure Your Happiness” subverts the primary function of the toise, a tool designed to measure the human body. Through her interpretation, La Dactylo questions our need to evaluate, compare, and quantify everything. Can happiness truly be measured? Is there a unit capable of quantifying it? By erecting a measuring rod whose scale has been replaced by the words “Measure Your Happiness,” the artist confronts the visitor with a paradox: the desire to measure what, by its very nature, defies measurement. The work oscillates between humor and philosophy. It transforms a precision tool into an instrument of doubt that questions our contemporary obsession with measurement and evaluation, while reminding us that certain things have no unit, no scale, and no price. THIS LOT IS SOLD BY DESIGNATION. PLEASE CONTACT THE AUCTION HOUSE TO COLLECT THE LOT.