Bodrum’s park turns into a culture center

MUĞLA - Anatolia News Agency

The sculpture park in the skirts of the historical Aspat Castle in Bodrum’s Turgutreis will turn the area into a contemporary art museum and offer a new culture space. AA photo

Sixty sculptures that 60 Turkish and foreign sculptors completed over 10 years will be exhibited in a new sculpture park around the historical Aspat Castle in Bodrum’s Turgutreis district in the Aegean province of Muğla.

Speaking to Anatolia news agency, Ankara University History of Art Department head Professor Kıymet Giray said 60 sculptors, including artists from Italy, Germany, Japan, France, Uzbekistan and Greece, had created the works around the castle over the last 10 summers.

Giray said the sculptors used marble quarried in Muğla, adding that each sculptor had created one sculpture and all the sculptures had been finished this year. She said they had tried to create new contemporary works featuring Bodrum’s cultural structure in the ancient era, and that the goal was to turn the Aspat area into a contemporary art museum.

“We have created an open-air sculpture park and an art center for Bodrum. Our goal is to make Aspat a special culture park, like others around the world. We will continue to develop it in future years,” she said.
 
Giray said that besides the sculptures, 120 paintings by 60 painters would be exhibited in an atelier in the open area. The installations of both the sculptures and the paintings have been completed, she said, and the park would open in a week.

Italian sculptor Daniele Miola, Uzbek Tadjıkhodjaev Tulyagan and Turkish Ecan Sağlam are some of the sculptors who worked on the project, which will be a new attraction in the popular holiday resort town.