We’re accustomed to seeing dead sharks and sliced-up anatomy in the gallery, but what to make of sectioned orange Spaulding basketballs? Suspended in blocks of clear resin and Plexiglas, the balls are quartered like shanks of meat. They’ve been pulled apart and misaligned–something like an unsolved Rubik’s cube, but only in one color. On the walls, local artist Daly takes X-acto to photos of the same object; here their shapes are distended and recontoured into new oblong-ish forms. You think it’s some easy digital manipulation–the dragging of a cursor or flick of a mouse. But Daly’s hand-wielded blade is responsible for the resculpting.Image and details after the jump…Just like dribbling or shooting or passing the ball in a game, these works on display in “Visual Fiction” retain a sense of haptic craft behind them–it’s all about touch, in the fingers and wrist. On the court, a basketball is merely an instrument, a tool. Here, it’s been retooled into something strange and deformed that will never again touch a net.Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera.com. Free. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Through Nov. 14.