Got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see.

—The Beatles, “Come Together”

Existence is largely made of darkness. Most of the matter in the universe is an invisible something that is not atoms; most of its mass resides in the form of an even more mysterious “dark energy” that is pushing everything apart.

Add to this unpromising palette the ubiquitous black holes that pepper the cosmos, pulling matter and energy into endless gravitational pits, and you have a real challenge if you are an artist intent on portraying the essence of reality.

That is the conundrum posed by “Dark Matters,” a new collection of paintings and sculptures by the artist Shea Hembrey. “How do you show what’s not there? How do you show energy?” Mr. Hembrey asked recently. The exhibit, which he calls “a collective meditation on the unseen structure of our universe,” is his first solo show in New York City.