Stairs for a person who isn't there

That little staircase is terribly inviting. Pale steps climb into a rectangular opening in the clay, beneath folded planes of pink, light blue and green. It looks like a mountain, or a house with no interest in building regulations. You're already working out which way to turn once you're inside.

The sculpture occupies the centre of the poster for Liou Chen-Chou's Landscapes of the Mind at Huludun Cultural Center. Against the black background, its raised span leaves a large pocket of darkness beneath it. There's a way in on the left, anyway. Whether you can get out is another matter.

Liou explained the stairs in an interview published by the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute in 2008. He had grown dissatisfied with looking at nature from a distance; he wanted people to be able to enter it. Ink painting offered a way. A few lines for steps on a mountainside could suggest someone climbing through the landscape without a single figure being drawn. His ceramic stairs extend the same invitation. The missing person is supplied by whoever is looking.

A mountain with an inside

The broad green plane on the poster looks solid and closed. Beside it, the small opening makes you wonder about the interior. Lower down the poster, steps rise from a round hole in a separate, earth-coloured sculpture. Your eyes have started climbing before you've worked out what sort of dimension this is.

Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts describes Liou cutting sections from natural terrain, setting flat, hard-edged planes against changes in the surface. Clay can carry scratched, rough textures; exposed clay can sit beside smooth glaze. A moment ago your eyes were wandering through a strange landscape. Now you remember that a very substantial ceramic object is holding it up.

The bright colours make these forms approachable. In the same 2008 interview, Liou connects the growing amount of colour in his work with family life, especially the liveliness of having children. He also describes becoming more willing to leave bumps from beating the clay and dents from pinching it, instead of forcing every plane into obedience. It's a generous way to treat a material. Some landlords could learn from it.

Go to Fengyuan

Landscapes of the Mind — Liou Chen-Chou Ceramic Art Exhibition runs from September 4 to October 4, 2026, in Exhibition Room I on the first floor of Huludun Cultural Center, 782 Yuanhuan East Road, Fengyuan, Taichung. Admission is free. The gallery opens Tuesday–Sunday, 09:00–17:30, and closes on Mondays. From Fengyuan railway station, it's about an 830-metre walk; allow 15 minutes.

The centre has also published a 160-page hardcover catalogue, listed at NT$600 by Taiwan's Government Publications Bookstore. After the gallery closes, you can open the landscape again.