The first painters that we know of depicted the animals that they hunted with deft-handed skill using a sophisticated tool kit including the reeds that were used as an airbrush. Their work survives deep within caves that are dotted around Europe - Lascaux in France being the most famous.

Over a span of centuries, the people of what is called the Magdalenian culture painted their game animals with astonishing skill and liveliness. The purpose of the paintings is lost to us now, though most theories point to magical and religious meaning bound up with the art. The act of depiction may have been considered so powerful that the artists may have felt themselves to be in control over the animals themselves, thus ensuring the success of the hunt.

In his show “The Modern Cave,” now on view at the Fulcrum Gallery, Tacoma artist Malcom McLaren seems to hearken back to those paintings deep in the ancient caves. Purporting to explore the function of myth, both ancient and modern, McLaren’s paintings, assemblages and bronze sculpture hang on the gallery walls as if pretending to mimic those old paintings on the walls of the caves.

Considered with reference to the ancient cave art, the pieces in McLaren’s “Modern Cave” come across as a synthesis of modern abstract expressionism and the props in a Hollywood version of caveman life in which the constructions of “primitive” people are imagined as crude and slap-dash. Rudimentary quality may have been true of the works of the Neanderthal, but the material products of Cro-Magnon people were probably very skillfully made.

Considered outside this framework, however, the works themselves are more than able to stand by their own merit. They are fine compositions of texture, color and form that have been made with a variety of found materials: galvanized pipe strapping, cardboard, drywall, screws, wire and even old pieces of carpet. McLaren sprinkled some with gunpowder that was then flash-ignited in order to give them a rustic and gritty patina.

While all of the pieces feature the faux-caveman aesthetic discussed above, only a few contain content that makes any overt reference to either mythology or to actual cave painting. The piece entitled “Exhibit D,” for example, looks like a mythic centaur constructed of rectangular pieces of construction materials that are coated in colors that bear a close resemblance to the red and yellow ocher that was used in the ancient caves. This same limited color palette is used in most of the pieces in the show. The centaur’s eyes and nose are made using a trio of drywall screws. A network of wire, wrapped around more drywall screws, hangs in front of the surface like a three-dimensional scribble. According to gallery owner Oliver Doriss, the gunpowder on this piece was ignited during the Oct. 8 opening of the show.

“Exhibit F” is a long-legged, deer-like animal painted on a large piece of cardboard. A trio of spears is depicted next to the animal (the conjunction of animals and arrows or spears is a common feature of the paintings in the prehistoric caves). The show also features a pair of bronze figures, one of which, “Exhibit H (Girl),” resembles a fertility goddess with Dali-like extensions of her limbs.

While it is difficult to understand the artist’s purported connection between the artwork and political theory or the “low-entropy” quality of mythology, the use of ocher-like colors and found materials do succeed in making some kind of reference to the paintings found in the ancient caves of the ancestors.

Fulcrum Gallery, one of the treasures of Tacoma, is also one of the few venues in which quality work by emerging artists can be encountered. “Modern Cave” runs through Nov. 15. McLaren will give an artist’s talk Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. For further information visit www.fulcurm.oliverdoriss.com or call (253) 250-0520.