Johann Ryno de Wet

The realm of dreams remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and even more so, there are people who seem to travel through it while fully awake. There can be no other explanation for the daring and chimerical photographs of Johann Ryno de Wet (Johannesburg, South Africa, 1982). Ryno effectively employs digital technology to transform a starting point into a destination that exists only in his mind.

The Freudian concept of the "uncanny" (Unheimlich) is his starting point, transforming a tangible reality into something unrecognizable, displaced, and threatening. Ryno invents post-apocalyptic landscapes, devoid of human presence, with a desolate and unsettling appearance that is nonetheless indescribably beautiful. Rarely has artifice been more justified than in Ryno's work, for it opens the doors to a fictional and fantastical world that is authentically personal.