The entry into Tavares Strachan’s “Invisibles” exhibition is a kind of anteroom (Six Thousand Years, 2018) evoking something like a private library or even a Wunderkammer. It’s wall to wall, floor to ceiling array of acrylic vitrines, each the exact same size, holds reproductions of pages from the Encyclopedia. The exhibition’s print material references Britannica, evoking the never setting sun of the British Empire, and indeed, this display conjures the private Wunderkammers and libraries that were expressions of a vast imperial effort to capture the entire world in microcosm. It doubly references the Bahamas, where the artist was born, and which was a British colony until 1973.

Tavares Strachan, Six Thousand Years (detail), 2018. Archival inkjet, pigment, enamel, vinyl, graphite, mylar, spray paint, collage, oil stick, acrylic mounted on sintra encased in acrylic. 826 units, each 11 x 8 x 2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

The focal point of this introduction to Strachan’s larger montage, neon, and sculptural multimedia works is The Encyclopedia of Invisibility (white) (2018), which sits encased in its own vitrine atop a small desk.

Tavares Strachan, The Encyclopedia of Invisibility (white) 2018. Leather, gilding, archival paper, white maple, felt, acrylic. Overall dimensions: 55 x 36 x 20 5/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

The theme of invisibility pervades the exhibition, and here, “Invisibles” refers not just to the individuals, communities, achievements—the histories—that have been elided from the encyclopedia, a conceptual project that directly indexes an Imperial past, but also to the individuals who write the entries in the encyclopedia, or the editors who decide what makes it into this compendium that carries with it an authoritative air and draws the boundaries of knowledge.

Tavares Strachan, The Stranger (2018), mylar, matte paper, pigment, enamel, vinyl, graphite, mounted on acrylic, 36 x 36 x 2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

The individual pages in Strachan’s array of individual encyclopedia entries have been overwritten with collage elements. This act of rewriting continues through the larger montage-works in the exhibitions core, in which Strachan draws from the encyclopedia and foregrounds various pieces of information.

Tavares Strachan, Victorian I (2018), mylar, matte paper, pigment, spray paint, acrylic, oil stick, enamel, vinyl, graphite. Framed dimensions: 63 1/2 x 125 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Tavares Strachan, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. (2018), 4500k neon, blue neon, yellow neon, orange neon, tube supports, transformers, 80 x 120 x 2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

In this exhibition, the artist has returned to themes from previous bodies of work, for example, images of African American arctic explorer Matthew Henson, and Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first African American to be an astronaut. These examples along with the exhibition title broadly invoke Ralph Ellison. A trio of small glass, Pyrex and mineral oil sculptures—spectacles (Spectacles from the Invisibles, 2018) after Shirley Chisholm, Matthew Henson and Tenzing Norgay—are on display in the gallery’s lobby as both prelude and epilogue.

Tavares Strachan, Chisholm (Spectacles from The Invisibles) (detail), 2018, Glass, Pyrex, Mineral oil, lacquered MDF, 17 x 15 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Tavares Strachan, “Invisibles,” November 2 – December 22, 2018, at Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038. www.regenprojects.com