Eurydice Lost

At first look, despite its clean and concise lines, it’s the attention to detail that stands out in the work of street artist Buff Diss. Only on approach do you realize that it’s not spray paint, but tape.

From Melbourne in Australia, Buff Diss’ acute vision picks out the history and architecture of a city, and portrays the streets and the interweaving flow of people and cars through them. He has undertaken a unique fusion, a dialogue between reality and fantasy, using masking tape to realize street art, which, while without damaging the paintwork of buildings, does nothing to diminish his work’s striking and thought-provoking nature.

In a corridor space of the Taipei New Horizon Building the artist portrays the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. After Eurydice died of snakebite, Orpheus played a song so sad that he won over the underworld gods with his music. The gods allowed Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should not look back until they both had reached the upper world. However in his anxiety Orpheus couldn’t resist disobeying the instruction, causing Eurydice to disappear. For Buff Diss, the myth represents the struggle of an artist in trusting his inspiration: when you run into self-doubt, you should keep marching onward to reach spiritual freedom.