Sébastien Chéramy and the Soul of Places at the Plaza Hotel Lucchesi

FLORENCE – From July 15 to September 20, 2026, the Plaza Hotel Lucchesi will host the artistic production of Sébastien Chéramy. The exhibition, part of the "Gusto Visivo" series by KEEP ART Firenze and in collaboration with LOJELO Art Gallery, celebrates a way of interrogating memory, matter, and human presence through abstraction.

The Concept: A Territory of Traces and Memory

Since 2003, Chéramy has developed a body of work in which the canvas ceases to be a mere support and becomes a territory: an interior wall, a living skin traversed by traces, erasures, stratifications, and rebirths. His painting presents itself as a reflection on time, where the material does not decorate; it speaks. It bears the scars of reality, the vibration of eroded facades, the memory of cities, and the poetry of worn surfaces, inscribing the work within a contemporary meditation on impermanence and the beauty of what endures through wear.

Florence appears to you as a spiritual matrix: its walls, its buildings, its light and its Renaissance memory become the silent interlocutors of a deeply embodied abstraction in which the artist dialogues with the great masters of the past and with the "Unfinished".

The Technique: The Density of Gesture and Matter

Pastes, glazes, scratches and superimpositions become narrative substance to compose sensitive palimpsests in which the gaze discovers as much as it remembers.

• Chaos and Clarity: The pictorial gesture possesses the density of a thought in motion, advancing between volcanic fire and meditative breath, between the fracture of the world and the possibility of a quiet.

• Space and Resonance: Deep reds like telluric energy and ochres open a space where color becomes a soft voice, while whites, blacks, blues, transparencies and voids create a breath that invites the viewer to enter the time of the work.

Sébastien Chéramy: The Archeology of the Present

Sébastien Chéramy, born in 1979, belongs to a generation of artists for whom abstraction is no longer simply a formal language, but a way of interrogating memory, matter, and the human presence . A former stained glass restorer and art history graduate, he inherited from his craft a sense of surface, light, and slowness, and from aesthetic thought an acute awareness of what time inscribes in places. Since 2003, he has developed a body of work in which the canvas becomes less a support than a territory: an interior wall, a living skin traversed by traces, erasures, stratifications, and rebirths.

Matter and Time (Decay as Transformation)

His painting is constructed like an archaeology of the present. Impastos, glazes, scratches, and superimpositions compose sensitive palimpsests in which the gaze discovers as much as it remembers. In Chéramy's work, the material doesn't decorate; it speaks. It brings with it:

• The scars of the real

• The vibration of the eroded facades

• The memory of cities

• The poetry of worn surfaces

This attention to decay —intended not as decline, but as transformation—places his work within a contemporary meditation on impermanence, renewal, and the beauty of what endures through wear and tear.

The research cycles and the connection with Florence

The series brought together in this corpus— Conversation with the Wall, From Within, Poetry, Vivant, Pompeii, Wabi Sabi, and Vivant / Traversée —form the chapters of a single existential quest.

Florence appears to him as a spiritual matrix: its walls, its palaces, its light, and its Renaissance memory become the silent interlocutors of a deeply embodied abstraction. The artist dialogues with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, the Non Finito , the lyricism of Poliziano, but also with a Japanese sensibility in which imperfection becomes nobility.

The color and the gesture

In this work, the pictorial gesture possesses the density of a thought in motion. It advances between chaos and clarity, between volcanic fire and meditative breathing, between the fracture of the world and the possibility of stillness:

• The red of Pompeii: it is not just a color, it is telluric energy, the awakening of stone, the persistence of life beneath the ashes.

• The ochres ( of Poetry and of Conversation with the wall ): they open a space of resonance where the colour becomes a soft voice, an almost ancient song.

• The whites, the blacks, the transparencies and the voids: they create a breath that invites the spectator to enter the time of the work.

The Experience of the Unfinished. Sébastien Chéramy's uniqueness lies in this rare ability: to transform the painted surface into a place of transition. His canvases do not simply deliver an image; they propose an experience. They ask the viewer to slow down, to read the traces, to accept the unfinished , and to recognize, in the very fragility of the material, a form of permanence. This is where his abstraction finds its strength: it does not distance itself from reality, but reveals its deepest imprints.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Useful Information

• Artist: Sébastien Chéramy

• Project Title: Visual Taste (Exhibition curated by KEEP ART Florence)

• In collaboration with: LOJELO Art Gallery

• Headquarters: Plaza Hotel Lucchesi, Florence

• Period: July 15, 2026 – September 20, 2026

Event Details – Friday, July 17, 2026

• 6:00 PM | Guided tour of the exhibition: Presentation with the artist. Free admission.

• 7:00 PM | Rooftop Empireo: Convivial dinner with the artist, limited to 20 people. Reservations required.

Headquarters: Plaza Hotel Lucchesi – Lungarno della Zecca Vecchia, 38, Florence.

Dinner reservations (Ristorante Segno by Empireo): Tel. +39 055 2623576 | Email: empireo@toflorence.it

Info Works and press contact: Karen Lojelo

Tel: +39 329 608 1170

| Email: lagrandebellezzavolterra@gmail.com

| Website: www.lojeloartgallery.com

Artist's Statement

"I don't just paint shapes, I translate the soul of places."