Michael McGregor - "Room Service"

LOS ANGELES—A study of elegance, decadence, and travel, the snapshot drawings featured in Michael McGregor’s new book Room Service capture and preserve the small, fleeting moments cherished during travel abroad. The joint effort of Paragon Books and Hashimoto Contemporary, Room Service compiles 118 snapshot drawings by Michael McGregor on hotel stationery from around the world, as well as black and white images of the artist in action and a postface essay by Danish Sociologist Nikolaj Schultz. By rendering specific objects and memories through playful impressions, McGregor captures the fantastic and intimate aspects of life on the road, like a diary records the immediate sensations of trips near and far.

“When traveling, especially alone, time has a funny way of both freezing and evaporating simultaneously. Objects glow de novo and every glimpse—down an alley, around a corner, upon the sea, into a bar—sparks a sense,” reflects the Los Angeles artist. The drawings featured in the monograph were made between 2016 and 2023 in hotel rooms, cafes, bars, and airports; in restaurants while waiting for a friend; in beds, in bathrooms, on balconies; on trains, planes, ferries, and buses. Though made in motion and haste, the vibrant, gestural pencil crayon drawings were made with care and humor, attempting to capture an already faded moment when objects took on a different flavor—a shirt in a window became a heavenly omen, the clink clink of a bottle on the cobblestone became a song, a red Saab 900 Turbo became a chariot. Together, the compilation of “point and shoot” drawings on hotel stationary—a specific, nostalgic, material—offers a charming, vibrant, even frisky perspective on leisure, memory, and luxury filled with allusions to art history, pop culture, and odes to everyday objects.