The Space Between Us by Chris Duh (photo by Roy Inman)
More than 35 years after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, artist Chris Duh’s The Space Between Us prompts people to contemplate the meaning and interpretation of a historic landmark that, for some, predates their own existence.
Created for the international touring exhibition “The Berlin Wall: A World Divided” at Union Station, Duh’s installation towers 13 feet high. The sculpture’s scale, design and materials enable people to move through the space and consider its size and significance in relation to themselves.
Physical and psychological reflection functions on several levels. Duh, a Hallmark artist for more than 30 years, reimagines the Berlin Wall as a transparent structure of fragmented reflections made from mirrored surfaces, frosted acrylic forms, projected graffiti-inspired video and shards of industrial materials. Mirrored fragments rotate, reassembling reflections of projected black-and-white images of Germans from different generations. Reflections of visitors also shift as people move through the space, placing the viewer within the work itself.
Projected light simulates a grid on and around Duh’s sculpture, an echo of exposed rebar that provides structure beneath the decaying surface. “History is still moving in transition. Gridwork remains the last to dissolve,” says Duh.
Duh’s vertical assembly contrasts starkly with six massive concrete segments of the original wall displayed elsewhere in the exhibition. Those segments traveled approximately 4,000 nautical miles from Barcelona, Spain, symbolic reminders that history spans time, geography, and even generational responses to real and forgotten fixtures of the past.
The installation spurs questions, Duh suggests. “Where are we today with our mindset? We make up our own history. Emotional ties and physical ties are part of choices we make about the future, a reflective choice of what you’ll do with your life as a human being.”
The Berlin Wall divided democratic and communist governments and societies. Duh’s artwork nudges viewers: “How do we separate ourselves through different ideologies? There are hopeful statements about choices we can make that help everybody.”
In other words, people alive now have agency. Then and now, history isn’t static but is instead shaped and defined by us. History, especially for those who lived through it, exists as fragments of memory to be remembered and reconstructed, perhaps faithfully, even as tangible reminders, like the Wall, disintegrate over time. For younger generations, history can lead to discovery.
In the exhibition’s final gallery, “Global Transformation and the End of the Cold War,” visitors may use markers to sign a constructed wall near Duh’s sculpture, a nod to ’80s graffiti and artwork left by West Berliners on the original wall. Union Station also commissioned Kansas City artist Chico Sierra to create floor-to-ceiling graffiti on walls in another section.
With Ramon Olivera, Chris Duh also co-created Journey to Wonder, a 28-foot rocket sculpture on display in Rainen Family Plaza outside the lower level of Union Station.
The Space Between Us will remain permanently at Union Station Kansas City following the conclusion of “The Berlin Wall: A World Divided,” on view in the station’s Bank of America Gallery through Dec. 13. For more information, unionstation.org/event/berlin-wall.
