NinaJohnson

“Nina Johnson is honored to present The Four Moments of the Sun, George Nelson Preston’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in our intimate, wood-lined exhibition library. The exhibition brings together a new body of paintings that explore time, memory, cosmology, and the deeply layered inheritance of the Afro-Atlantic world.

It’s impossible to speak about George Nelson Preston’s work without acknowledging the vastness of his story. Born in New York City in 1938 to a family where art and music flowed freely, Preston grew up in an environment that nurtured both imagination and intellect. His parents, Mildred Lucille Jones Preston and John Lee Preston, recognized his gifts early—charmed by his childhood sketches, where, even at the age of eleven, he was “trying to use linear perspective, foreshortening, and overlapping of body parts.” With gentle guidance and great enthusiasm, they enrolled him in art school, helping set in motion a lifelong journey of creative discovery. Alongside family friends like Charles Aston, they shaped the roots of a path that would carry him across continents and through centuries of culture, history, and memory. Preston’s story has since unfolded like a beautifully layered novel—each chapter filled with movement, meaning, and the quiet magic of a life well observed.

It’s difficult to describe George Nelson Preston without invoking a sense of myth. His presence, his journey, and his work possess a rare gravity—rooted in history, lifted by imagination, and carried forward by an unshakable sense of purpose. He is not only an artist and deep-thinking historian, but an Akan Chief, a writer, a steward of stories, and something greater than the sum of all these roles. His life has been defined by a commitment to truth, to beauty, complex histories and to the power of honest, deeply felt storytelling.

The riches George has collected are not material. They are treasures made of moments: conversations shared over tea, poetry read aloud in Beat Lower East Side studios, ocean crossings both literal and symbolic. These moments—these towers of memory—have built the visual language we now see on his canvases.

In The Four Moments of the Sun, these stories find elemental form. The exhibition takes its name from a painting that follows the sun’s path from dawn to midnight, drawing inspiration from the Kongo cosmogram (also called the yowa or dikenga cross), a sacred symbol in Bakongo religion. Through the cosmogram’s structure—Ku Nseke (the world of the living), Ku Mpémba (the spiritual realm), and the Kalûnga line (the horizon that connects them)—Preston offers a visual and spiritual map of the worlds we inhabit and pass through.

“For me the work of art is never an end in itself.
Art is The Way, The Path, The Light…
I want my paintings to feel experienced… a mental architecture of these classical plans.
What kind of Light have I provided? How willing is the viewer?”
—George Nelson Preston

The Exhibition Library, filled with books that have inspired Preston’s academic and creative life, becomes a natural extension of the work—a sanctuary where art, story, and scholarship live side by side.

This exhibition is also a celebration of community. It was painter Cassi Namoda who introduced George to the gallery, a gesture of trust that led to his 2022 debut solo exhibition with us. For this exhibition, we’ve invited Cassi to contribute a painting in dialogue with Preston’s, underscoring the intergenerational exchange that has long shaped Black artistic expression.

On a personal note, I am forever grateful to Cassi for that introduction. George holds a special place in my heart. To know him, to share stories with him, and to learn from him has been one of the great honors of my career. Writing this press release is more than a professional duty—it is a tribute to a man who has shaped so much of what we do and why we do it.” – Karina Ors

Nina Johnson presents George Nelson Preston: The Four Moments of the Sun from May 22nd through August 7th in the Exhibition Library.