The Katherine E. Nash Gallery, located in the Regis Center for Art on the West Bank, is currently home to an exhibition titled “Cities” that includes 2D and 3D work from several different artists. These works range from the standard black and white photography of skylines and bridges to miniature clay renderings of Babylon and even a few paintings of Fargo, N.D.

A long table near the entrance holds perhaps a hundred white stoneware dishes, cups and bowls. Tetsuya Yamada’s display of housewares seems too domestic for the exhibition, but at a closer glance reveals itself to be an Ikea-inspired skyline. Aldo Moroni’s miniature Mesopotamian metropolis, “History of Civita” tiles and “Tower of Babel After Brugel” plaster cast are a fascinating and welcome change after the several awkward pieces depicting gas stations and grocery stores in Fargo that precede them. Moroni uses wax, terracotta and ceramic, among other materials, to create tiny cityscapes, rivers and buildings. Around the corner is a pristine, 3D urban landscape; Dan Tesene’s white, blemish-free layout is aptly titled “False City.”

The next part of the exhibit walls hold Mike Lynch’s visions of Minneapolis in oil, watercolor, ink and lithograph. Mike Melman’s similarly located views in silver print photography and Eric Erickson’s mundane acrylic paintings of skyways compliment the previous works. finThis section of somewhat-artistically shot and drawn scenes of the Twin Cities are all pleasant enough to the eye, but only for a second.

None of these pieces do justice to the living, breathing Twin Cities area. What could have been a dramatic and interesting, but not necessarily beautiful, photo is instead developed as a postcard-worthy and cliché-heavy skyline. These photos do nothing to further or question the concept of ‘City’ that most hold. They have been taken before, many times, and nothing about them is gallery-worthy. Or maybe the curators had no purpose in hanging the show outside of looking nice.

Stuart Klipper’s photo montage of skyscrapers and apartment buildings from a worm’s eye view most clearly attests to what I took as the exhibit’s well-hidden theme: it is the little-seen parts of a city, the surprises and not the stereotypes, that add anything of interest to the jumbles of architecture and edifice where we study, work and live.