GROUP SHOW

As we become more and more estranged from nature – beyond it being a resource to be exploited – we begin to see it increasingly as an abstraction or as a place to be feared. The artists in "Fabulandia: Fauna" – Donelle Estey, Mandy Greer, Tim Jag, Daniel Ross, and Tara Tucker – turn their eyes toward a future nature where the animals are either synthetic, hybridized, or bizarre permutations. In Berkeley artist Ross's large-scale digital print Spacious, three white owls (Mama, Papa, and Baby) float above a winter-glistening tree branch with pixilated orbs swirling above them against a sherbet sky, their large blue eyes focused on some fixed point over the viewer's shoulder. In Ross's Forever (the same size as Spacious, about four feet by five feet), a crow perched on a silver, diamond-encrusted twig that's festooned with a chain of daisies cocks its head back toward a body of water. Placed side by side, the two perform a kind of diptych, looking longingly at nature's past (Forever) or staring blankly at its uncertain future (Spacious). Seattle artist Greer's menagerie of seven soft sculptures made of papier-mâché, fabric, beads, and glitter suggests a gentler way of collecting animals: making them yourself. The aesthetic is that of an effusive concoction of celebrations, cakes, and little princess girl dresses, all of which make absurd the practice of sport killing. Tucker's mixed-media sculptures and graphite-on-paper drawings of a creature referred to as "Salty" or "Nubbins" resembles an amalgam of the egomaniacal Arturo the Aqua Boy from author Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and the baby in David Lynch's Eraserhead. Where Greer's animals are light and humorous, Tucker's Salty is haunted by violence and frustration, as if it were born of untenable circumstances and doesn't know how to be in this world – not unlike the fate of many creatures walking the planet these days. (Katie Kurtz)

FABULANDIA: FAUNA

The Lab, through Feb. 11, Wed.-Sat., 1-6 p.m.

2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org