NEW YORK.-Mary Ryan Gallery will present an exhibition of new photographs and drawings by Ward Davenny. Davenny’s ominous landscapes, or skyscapes, derive from the time he spends each summer filming and photographing storms in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Davenny depicts the unconquerable landscape. The benign, sun-filled prairies of America’s heartland are replaced by turbulent air and light, producing scenes of profound violence. “Storms are just such a vehicle for overwhelming me with an awareness of light, air, and the presence of threat. Their drama is real yet totally otherworldly- ephemeral almost. I always wanted to work with clouds and sky but I think needed to push it as far as possible,” says Davenny.

The exhibition features 9 digitally altered photographs, all 40 x 50 inches, and 3 large-scale charcoal drawings. Using a computer Davenny adjusts color, alters focus, eliminates features, and sometimes blends photos together. He manipulates the images so that they appear soft and almost hallucinatory. In contrast to the hyper-reality and over-defined focus in much contemporary photography, Davenny is more interested in “the particles, the swarm of insects that have no finite start or end.” The focus is on movement, luminescence, and shifting ambiguity. The influence of intaglio printmaking is evident in Davenny’s work, as the dissolve of light and edge recalls that of a mezzotint or aquatint.

Photographs have always served as reference material for Davenny’s paintings and drawings, in addition to being works of art in their own right. Because his subject matter is in constant flux, Davenny photographs quickly and instinctively—sometimes capturing nearly 700 hundred images—to arrive at a dozen or so that convey what he is looking for. In preparation for his drawings, he studies his video footage to examine the way storms move.

Author/critic Crispin Sartwell has called Davenny’s work a “confrontation with mortality” and “a celebration of the real,” but for Davenny, the sense of mortality in his work has less to do with the possibility of death than with a drug-like transport into an alternate reality: “There are so many realities. I want an anticipation of something from a viewer- a sucking in of breath, or an alteration and interruption of their reality--by persuasion more than shock. Shock seems too easy and too much bad art relies on it. That’s probably one reason I’m hesitant often to present the actual images of ‘the tornado’- what’s considered the ultimate by those storm-chasers. Well if the ultimate outcome has already occurred, it’s less interesting than the possibilities, than the sense of anticipation.”