Preying on an audience

Young Chang

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 film “The Predator” inspired Argentine

painter Fabian Marcaccio and Los Angeles architect Greg Lynn to create a

“painting-architecture mutant hybrid,” which they named after the film.

If the title conjures up images of a dreaded beast -- well, you have

no idea how dreaded the beast is.

When you enter the University Art Gallery at UC Irvine where the

abstract mutant dwells, then, and only then, will you understand what

“predator” really means.

The 30-foot-wide, 10-foot-high structure all but preys on the spacious

2,500-square-foot room that holds it. The enormous figure causes a

momentary sensation of dread, like something or someone’s about to get

sucked in by an entity that’s larger than almost anything alive.

“You have to walk around,” Marcaccio said from his New York home.

“It’s impossible to see it all together.”

“The Predator” opened at the gallery for viewing Friday and will stay

there through Nov. 18.

Squiggly like a worm and ridged like a caterpillar, the piece was

created with silk-screened “vacu-formed” plastic, paints and the help of

software.

Much of the structure -- or organism, as some have called it --

resembles a gigantic cylindrical bubble of partly see-through plastic.

But like an animal with a wounded belly, “The Predator” looks ripped into

at times.

Inside these torn-off walls of plastic, Marcaccio has created a

fantastic world of dark kingdoms nestled in gloomy, ridged clouds, green

cage walls, red bubbles that feel somehow grotesque just in their

appearance and swirling flames that remind you, though you’ve never been

there, of hell.

The effect -- a combination of film, architecture, painting and even

music, as DJ Spooky’s custom-made mix will accompany the installation --

is monstrous and cinematic.

“We both like early ‘80s movies,” Marcaccio said of himself and Lynn.

“But what we’re interested in is the level of an interiorized type of

camouflage of the creature. The idea that an entity could be totally

continuous with an environment.”

That idea swept across the big screen almost 15 years ago. In the

movie “The Predator,” Schwarzenegger leads a group of commandos to combat

a guerrilla stronghold. But the group ends up being hunted by a strange

creature with camouflaging capabilities.

“My hope is that people will be quite wowed by this,” said Jeanie

Weiffenbach, director of the University Art Gallery and the Beall Center

for Art and Technology at UC Irvine. “It is such an incredible,

voluptuous creature.”

Marcaccio said the piece invites a “dynamic viewing” experience.

But if the painter had things his way, he’d do more than just view

“The Predator.”

“I would love to live in it if I could,” he joked. “But it’s always in

a museum.”

FYI

* WHAT: “The Predator”

* WHEN: Through Nov. 18. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tues-Sun,

noon to 8 p.m. Thurs. A gallery talk will be given at 2 p.m. Sunday.

* WHERE: University Art Gallery at UC Irvine, Claire Trevor School of

the Arts, 712 Arts Plaza

* COST: Free

* CALL: (949) 824-6206