Live in a city long enough, and most of us stop noticing the ubiquitous and uniformly drab pre-fab structures and big box architecture of which the modern urban environment is made. But not Carolyn Swiszcz and Karen Brummund, both of whom have work on view in Bethel University’s small exhibition, “Binocular City.” These artists share a knack for revealing the quirks of place and culture, even in such highly processed locales.

Brummund does so with large-scale, time-based and site-specific installations. These uncover the many histories of the built environment, using drawings and video, which make explicit the overlay of past, present and future in a given space. For example, for the video/installation “Before 1190 Huff Road,” Brummund covers an unremarkable 1950s warehouse space with a scale photograph, printed piecemeal on letter-sized paper, of the long-since-demolished Huff family homestead, which resided on the property for more than 100 years. Brummund’s doubling makes explicit the continuum of human history, invoking not only the home, but the very different way of life that used to hold sway there.

Swiszcz’s pieces — an appealing amalgam of printmaking, collage, painting and video — pay wryly affectionate homage to the nondescript environs of the suburb: a tatty strip mall, bakery outlet, nail salon. Color-saturated and set against surreal, vividly patterned horizons, her subjects have left their heydays long behind them; candy-colored though they are, the structures look time worn, bereft. Seen through Swiszcz’s eyes, these edifices are at once timeless and transient in their interchangeability and their distinct markers and individual quirks rendered most noticeable in dereliction.

“Binocular City” runs from Sept. 29 through Dec. 8 in Bethel University’s Johnson Gallery, 3900 Bethel Drive, St. Paul, Minn., 55112. Gallery hours: Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. There is an artist talk with Brummond scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 13 at 5 p.m. Swiszcz will discuss her work in the gallery on Nov. 8 at 5 p.m.