Cristina Legato Orr and Damian Fagan

Through June 16, Paxton Gate

NO ANIMALS WERE harmed in the making of these pictures, according to Cristina Legato Orr. She's not a killer – just an artist with an overabundance of morbid curiosity. Orr collects and photographs the desiccated corpses of little rodents, amphibians, and sometimes even medium-size mammals, like the cat in Burns. Her pictures have straightforward titles such as Frog and Newt, but the images are poetic, shadowy, sepia-toned prints that lovingly linger over the creatures' empty eye sockets and broken skeletons. Often there's even a little bit of scraggly fur still attached to their stiff, dried-up flesh. Some look peaceful in death. Others seem frozen in a silent scream, with bared teeth and splayed-out limbs. Even more disturbing are Orr's "Bestial Dioramas," which contain small dead animals positioned to tell Silence of the Lambs-style vignettes: they're held prisoner in a cage of rib bones, suspended from the ceiling in a web of metal wire, pinned to the wall as if crucified, or encircled by frayed electrical wiring. Sharing the exhibition space with Orr is another local artist, Damian Fagan, who also uses dead animals in his work but takes a more humorous approach. The materials he uses sound like ones you'd find in a witch doctor's larder: chicken heads, fish, moths, coat hangers, flowers, vials, and all sorts of found objects. Fagan's wall-mounted constructions, thrown together willy-nilly and smothered under a glutinous layer of clear plastic resin, evoke seemingly random associations – from trophy-fish taxidermy to floral funeral monuments and B horror flicks. What they mean is unclear, but they've got a lot more going on than just pure Dada absurdity; there's an underlying method to Fagan's apparent madness. Mon.-Thurs., noon-7 p.m.; Fri., noon-8 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m., 824 Valencia, S.F. (415) 824-1872. (Lindsey Westbrook)