Press Release: Five Points Gallery New Exhibitions

[jfor...@aol.com]

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Karl Goulet <kgo...@fivepointsarts.org>

Subject: Press Release: Five Points Gallery New Exhibitions

To whom it may concern, 

Attached and listed below is the next PR for Five Points Gallery. 

Also attached is the ​e-announcement. 

Thank you!

Karl Goulet
Gallery Director, Five Points Arts
860-618-7222 | kgo...@fivepointsarts.org
fivepointsarts.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 What: Five Points Gallery presents three new exhibitions: 

“Federación Venezolana de Bobsleigh”, by Enrique Figueredo

“Envisivivarium”, by Kenny Harris 

“Personal Journeys”, feat. Priya N. Green, Diane Messinger, Afarin Rahmanifar.

June 19 - August 1, 2026

Opening Reception: Friday, June 19, 2026

Artist Talk: Friday, July 10, 6:30 p.m. 

Location: Five Points Gallery, 07 Water Street, Torrington, CT 06790

Contact: Judith McElhone, (860) 618-2167 | jmce...@fivepointsarts.org

 

TORRINGTON, CONN. — Five Points Gallery comprises three exhibition spaces, each featuring new shows. In the Torrington Downtown Partners (TDP) Gallery, Enrique Figueredo’s woodcut prints depict a fictional Venezuelan bobsled team and their quest throughout history. Kenny Harris’ paper-based installation depicts creatures and characters from world mythology in the Torrington Savings Bank (TSB) Gallery. The West Gallery features three women artists working with concepts of memory, identity, and women’s voices through painting and mixed media. 

 

Federación Venezolana de Bobsleigh - Torrington Downtown Partners Gallery

Enrique Figueredo’s intricate prints masterfully layer elements of history, pop culture, architecture, cultural identity, and religion. Inspired by the 1993 film, Cool Runnings, Enrique has created his own Venezuelan bobsled team to bolster national pride. The depicted masked athletes are superimposed among historical figures and landscapes significant to Venezuela, acting as time-traveling explorers. 

Figueredo states, “Together, the fantastical imagery conveys the push-and-pull of a homeland affected by a migration crisis, political turmoil, and the plight of abundant natural resources. They retell well-known historical lore, point to past and present global commodities and economies, and map out my ancestral, personal, and religious experience”.

 

Envisivivarium - Torrington Savings Bank Gallery

Kenny Harris has condensed humanity’s diverse culture of myths to showcase the human propensity towards imagination. By interpreting elements of the unknown, humans have created thousands of mythological beings ranging from ancient deities to creatures that go bump in the night. Harris stylistically recreates each figure on thin paper with black ink, held upright in space by steel armatures to cast dramatic shadows. Harris states, “The figures’ shadows present a unique frieze of ambiguous forms, providing the audience with an opportunity to create new figures, narratives, and interactions, engaging in the creative process that has inspired humans for millennia.” 

 

Personal Journeys - West Gallery

Priya N. Green’s paintings explore stills from Indian cinema and act as an homage to her late grandfather and his career as an artist, journalist, and screenwriter for Bollywood during the 80s and 90s.  

By watching the films her grandfather created and reconnecting with him decades after his death, Green experienced a surreal illusion of time, technology, language, and distance. Her paintings, both monochromatic and highly saturated, serve as a visual exploration of seeing the world through her grandfather’s eyes and reconnecting a lost bond. Green states, “Painting, a language unto itself, becomes a way to speak all the incommunicable things found in these films and photographs that belong to a certain place and time. And in painting them, they become mine.”

 

Diane Messinger’s powerful paintings investigate the complexities of relationships and the range of human emotion, delving into oppression, conflict, and violence. The works are rich with symbolism and layered with personal history as they capture fractured states of memory and identity. Messinger’s act of painting these large scenes mirrors the complexities of her subjects. Loose gestural strokes begin to define representational forms, the surfaces are energized and agitated, rendered and obscured. The work proves that despite our fragility and vulnerability, we are complicated beings capable of great courage and strength. 

 

Afarin Rahmanifar has forged a body of work that is shaped by memory, mythology, and resistance. Constructing layered visual narratives that draw on Persian miniature painting, anatomical drawing, and symbolism. Her imagery navigates the territories of exile, dislocation, womanhood, and power; unearthing the strength of women long unseen or unheard. A central strand of her inquiry engages the women of the Persian epic Shahnameh—reframing those mythic figures within contemporary dialogues of memory and representation.

 

•••

About Five Points Gallery: Located in the historic district of downtown Torrington, CT, Five Points Gallery is the flagship location of Five Points Arts, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit contemporary arts organization whose mission is to champion and nurture artists at all stages of their careers and to empower a diverse community through the presentation of inspiring exhibitions and educational initiatives. For more information about Five Points Arts, please visit www.fivepointsarts.org

 

Five Points Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 1 - 5 p.m., and by appointment (860-618-7222).  

All Five Points Gallery exhibitions and educational events are free and open to the public. There is no admission charge to the Gallery. All artwork is for sale.

 

Five Points Arts is supported in part by the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Department of Economic and Community Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

                                                                     

                                                                         -END-