About us
URNE.RIP is a production project conceived by Vittorio Dapelo and Laura Garbarino in collaboration with artists Diego Perrone and Andrea Sala, who joined the group to support and advise on many aspects of the process.
Founded in 2020 and launched in June 2022 during the Milan Design Week, URNE.RIP has been crafting the first prototypes of urns over the past two years.
This idea traces its roots in some conversations Vittorio had with artist Ettore Spalletti between the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, Ettore was exhibiting at Locus Solus Gallery in Genoa, and he was concurrently working on a project for Salle des Départs de Garches, near Paris that embodied perfectly URNE.RIP vision of giving an alternative to the actual production of urns. The project finally materialized in 2020 with Laura, who has always loved this venture, and who thought it was necessary to create a link between the art world and the general public around the theme of death, and without depending on the art system. URNE.RIP is for everyone who cares.
URNE.RIP, thus, meets the need for an aesthetic-minded production of cinerary urns, ones made in a limited edition and conceived by artists, architects and designers, aiming to reappraise the concept of loss and absence.
This project leads to reflect on the arduous theme of death, culturally avoided in the Western society, responding to a legitimate, intimate and practical need: to leave one’s footprint in a unique and personal way, not having to adapt to the blandness of forms and the ways in which we face the end nowadays. Over the past few years, less emphasis has always been given to the aesthetics of death, when for millennia mankind have celebrated it in different ways and forms, defining a real genre known as funerary art.
Designing an urn is not a simple matter, the artists’ reactions cover a wide range of emotions, spanning from enthusiasm to disgust. Up to now, everyone has taken a different stance in relation to the project that straddles the line between art and industrial design, and it is still unclear whether an empty urn is a work of art or perhaps simply a work, as Marcel Duchamp advocated, “peut-on faire des œuvres qui ne soient pas d’art?”
URNE.RIP allows us to reconsider in a particular way the representation of the memory of a lost person through objects conceived and curated directly by artists and designers, in a unique example on commission or in limited edition assembled by hand in collaboration with the best Italian and international artisans. The collection of urns is produced with a variety of materials selected from time to time by the invited artists and customized to the client’s requests in site-specific projects.
URNE.RIP, additionally, challenges and rethinks the concept of ecology in relation to space and materials, a collective and individual urgency which is increasingly pressing.
Vittorio Dapelo
He graduated in Art History in 1979 with a thesis on Land Art, while working as an assistant in Germano Celant’s archive. He founded the Artist’s Museum in the “Villa dei 100 Camini” in Artimino, Florence, between 1975 and 1980, working with artists such as Maria Nordman and Rebecca Horn. Between 1980 and 1994 he opened Locus Solus Gallery in Genoa, in partnership with Uberta Sannazzaro, which has hosted solo exhibitions of numerous international artists such as John Baldessari, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ettore Spalletti, Aldo Rossi, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Cinzia Ruggeri and many others. In 2010 he created THEVIEW Studio, a contemporary art production studio located in Sant’Ilario, Genoa, co-curated with Francesco Garutti. Between 2010 and 2019 THEVIEW Studio produced works, videos and films for exhibitions and collections, hosting and collaborating with many artists including: Vanessa Beecroft, Ida Ekblad, Ian Law, Peter Wächtler, Liliana Moro, Andrea Sala, Andrea Romano, Sofia Silva and Diego Marcon. Currently, with the collaboration of Giovanna Manzotti, he is working on the organization of documents and materials collected over the years, within the Archive of art and industrial design “DDD”. In 2020 he founded URNE.RIP, a production project with Laura Garbarino in collaboration with Diego Perrone and Andrea Sala.
Laura Garbarino
From 2004 to 2015, she represented the auction house Phillips & Co as Senior Specialist of Contemporary Art. From 2015 to 2020 she joins Chrisite’s International team as Senior Specialist of Post War & Contemporary Art. She currently works as an independent consultant for private collections and projects related to contemporary art. Graduated in Architecture in 1999 at the Polytechnic of Milan, specialized in Contemporary Art in London at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, she worked between 2001 and 2002 at Faggionato Fine Arts gallery, London and Galleria Gió Marconi in Milan. She continues with an activity as curator of a private collection of video art and curated some exhibitions: Amor Vacui, Arengario, Milano City Council; 24 artists in an industrial space, Assab One, Milano; Defrag at Suite 106 Gallery in New York and the program of Autori Cambi, Matteo Boetti’s gallery, Rome. Among the projects followed: she has been consultant for Art Experience, interdisciplinary workshops promoted by Domus Academy in Venice, with the participation of Rikrit Tiravanija, Christian Marclay, Olafur Eliasson and Carsten Nicolai; Vip Manager of MiArt 2009; she has held lectures and seminars at the University of Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, IULM, Milan, and NABA, Milan. She is a founding member of the Amixi of the Villa Croce Museum in Genoa (today Friends of Contemporary Art). In 2020 she founded URNE.RIP, a production project with Vittorio Dapelo in collaboration with Diego Perrone and Andrea Sala.