Artist statement:
It was on display in the Piazza Mercato (the marketplace) at Marghera,it was floating on the waters of the lagoon, at the Arsenale for the biennale of venice contemporary art 2003, in the Grand Canal Palazzo Ferro Fini " Veneto Region." Now it is on display at the Venice airport Marco Polo and ready on the new year to fly to New York for is permanent collocation. And this too has a symbolic value. This agile archi-sculpture, (an installation of a special kind) is a mix of architecture and sculpture standing 21 metres high, the work of Venetian sculptor Giorgio Bortoli and artist Piero Bortoli.

Commissioned by the Venice City Council, Veneto Region and produced by the Marghera-Venice-New York Association, "it represents the bell tower of St Mark's contained in the interior of the Metropolitan Life Tower of New York" - as the inscription placed at the foot of the structure states. The Metropolitan Life Tower - constructed in 1909 and the highest building in the world until 1913 - was a design architect Le Brun based on the bell tower of St Mark, almost as though to transplant a breath of old Europe into American territory; and for this reason it was chosen by Giorgio Bortoli as a "container" for the bell tower of St Mark that seems to shelter in its interior.

The evident purpose is to demonstrate a requirement and a desire that modernity in all its forms does not wipe out the past (whose preservation is culture); that it safeguards it and takes due lessons from it. It is a structure with many symbolic values, starting from the materials used, where steel, a clear symbol of modernity, is placed alongside glass - the symbol of Venetian craftsmanship - and fragments of the ancient bell tower of St Mark that collapsed in 1902, fragments at that time tipped into the sea and recently retrieved by the sculptor offshore from San Niccolo on the Lido.

But there is another element that should be highlighted. Like every work of art, this too represents what it represents, but not only what it represents. Beyond the works and the symbols there are meanings. The high number of Veneto companies that have desired to sponsor this work and the initiative that goes hand in hand with it does mean something: it confirms the Veneto's prestigious, abundant, enterprising work in the world, and at the same time it reminds us how this fortunate phase of economic expansion was preceded by the trials and tribulations of emigration: but, however you look at it, as enterprise or manual labour, it is still work.