Root Division Gallery

Root Division had a problem most galleries quietly live with: a freight elevator, tucked behind a huge diagonal steel column, that no amount of lighting could make disappear. For their "Lay of the Land" opening, they wanted it gone — not covered, but genuinely transformed.

We stood the screen directly in front of it, in the mezzanine exhibition room. Freed from a doorway, the piece could be read the way it was drawn: as a Byung-poong, a folding screen, translated into living material — its panels tall enough to hold the column's own scale, its planting soft enough to make people forget what was behind it.

The drink station happened to land right beside it, and the pairing worked better than anyone planned. Visitors lingered there the way they'd linger by a painting — stepping back for the whole, leaning in for the detail, drink in hand. What had been the room's most awkward corner became one of its most comfortable.