Mixed media exhibition at MSSU’s Spiva Gallery

A special exhibition of mixed media objects will be featured Monday, July 1, through Friday, Aug. 2, in the Spiva Art Gallery at Missouri Southern State University.

The works featured in “sample forms of compensation” are by Benjamin Cirgin, an assistant professor and head of the ceramics program at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Ky.

An artist talk is scheduled from to 2 to 3 p.m. Monday, July 1, followed by a reception in the gallery.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, including the Katherine C. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis, Minn., the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, Calif., and the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, Calif.

The works featured in “sample forms of compensation” meld several ongoing interpretations by Cirgin, resulting in a series of object-based sculptures. Through abstraction and simplification, they interpret how actual work completed by people defines our social placement within historic and contemporary society.

“My work develops by researching the undercurrent of commodified objects and the actual people who make them,” the artist says. “I find the precise moments in which human beings touch the production of these objects and how real lives are affected by partially hidden systems that determine the daily value of labor.”

Admission is free and open to the public. Summer hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday.