FS.ART - Julio Rondo

FS.ART Bodensee

Julio Rondo

FS.ART Showroom Bodensee, Karlstraße 16, 88069 Tettnang
March 14 – April 2, 2026 and April 13 – May 16, 2026
Thursdays 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm, Saturdays 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
or by appointment on kontakt@fs-art.de
Closed on public holidays

Since the early 1990s, Berlin-based artist Julio Rondo has been working with the technique of reverse glass painting, which he has developed into his distinctive artistic medium. The principle of this technique is as simple as it is demanding: the painting is executed on the reverse side of the glass. What we see is the result of an inverted layering process. The first brushstroke ultimately appears at the very front, while subsequent layers of paint recede behind it or remain only subtly visible. Each mark must therefore be conceived in advance—spontaneous corrections are hardly possible.

It is precisely this reversal that fundamentally shapes Rondo’s painting. The composition does not emerge from a gestural impulse, but from a precisely planned sequence of painterly decisions. Lines, fields of color, and transparent layers are carefully placed and enter into a controlled interplay. Rondo’s brushwork does not assert expressive urgency; it appears calm, clear, and constructive. Even where movement becomes visible, it remains part of a considered structure.

Equally characteristic are the deep object frames that Rondo frequently employs. The painted glass forms only one layer of the work. Surfaces behind it are also treated painterly, creating a spatial image body. A stage, then, on which painting is orchestrated as an interplay of transparency, superimposition, and distance.

The exhibition All Your Things brings together works from different phases of Rondo’s practice. Works from the years 1997 to 2008 enter into a concentrated dialogue with recent works from 2024 to 2026. In the earlier works, compositions are more strongly structured geometrically and remain more restrained in color. Later works develop a greater painterly fluidity. Transparent and opaque layers enter into a more dynamic relationship; lines are set against one another or deliberately disrupted.

Over the course of nearly three decades, a practice unfolds that consistently engages with the possibilities of reverse glass painting while continually opening up new pictorial spaces. The works reveal how Rondo advances the classical technique of reverse glass painting into a contemporary, independent form of painterly reflection.