Ryan Gander Untouched Ideas Machine, 2025

A viewer of Ryan Gander’s Idea machine first encounters a brass plate, installed flush with the wall. A button and a narrow horizontal slot below suggest a ticket machine. The work is intended to be touched: pressing on the button, a small white ticket stub with a short, printed text is produced. The work holds 2000 untouched ideas for artworks by Gander.

Gander has long collected spontaneous ideas, keeping a large pin wall in his studio. Producing them at such speed that giving them away is preferable to feeling the burden of holding onto them and realizing that he can never execute all the ideas, Gander's work is both an act of generosity and an acknowledgement of his own mortality.