Is there a more awesome human than Shaquille O’Neal?

For years I’ve maintained that everything Shaq does is art, and now he’s taking it up a notch:

Shaquille O’Neal is curating an art exhibit set to start on Feb. 19 at the FLAG Art space in Chelsea.

Needless to say, I will do everything in my power to attend the opening and report back here.

The subject of the exhibit is right in Shaq’s giant wheelhouse. It’s called “Size DOES Matter,” and will “explore the various ways that scale affects the perception of contemporary art.”

In other words: Big stuff.

Clearly, scale is an important aspect of my Awesomeist movement, and obviously Shaq recognizes that. And since Shaq is hand-selecting or commissioning every piece of art to be displayed, it’s bound to be the most comprehensive collection of Awesomeism yet assembled.

The list of artists includes Ron Mueck, a hyperrealist sculptor whose work I fell in love with when he had an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, back when I lived around the corner from it. His pieces are amazingly lifelike in every way except their ridiculous size, making them, in that sense, a lot like Shaquille O’Neal.

Jeff Koons is also on the list. Koons also sculpts some vaguely awesome work, but he ruins it when he opens his mouth and starts talking about the meaning. That contradicts one of the fundamentals of Awesomeism: That which is Awesome never needs an explanation.