Shaquille O'Neal's Art Fair is Art

EXPO Chicago—the city's "International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art"—is housed in the cavernous Festival Hall of Navy Pier, and vast enough to fill the place. It's all white and gray and silver halls, lined with innumerable (and expensive) art works from an international array of galleries. One approaches the EXPO floor and feels overwhelmed at the light, the space, the surrounding creation; it is like the first chapter of Genesis.

And here, amid it all, is the biggest name in an exposition full of them, a man who garners the kind of attention and Jovian gravitational pull all artists lust for: the Big Aristotle, the original Superman, Art Diesel, Shaquille O'Neal.

O'Neal stands in the booth of the FLAG Art Foundation, surrounded on three sides by the works he has helped curate for the exhibition SHAQ LOVES PEOPLE, and facing a small phalanx of crab-eyed TV cameras and flashing photographers. He is as large as one would expect, even in such expansive environs, surprisingly un-intimidating in both psychic and physical presence, graceful in a behemothic way, and with a friendly, low rumble in his voice; the effect is akin to seeing a C-130 Hercules in a 50-yard-line flyover.The FLAG Art Foundation is a New York City based exhibition space—meaning they do not sell the art; that would make them a gallery—with a focus on presenting contemporary art to as diverse an audience as possible.

O'Neal has curated a show with FLAG before, 2010's Size Does Matter, which was installed in the Foundation's Chelsea Art Tower space. Art Diesel, currently flanked before the assembled press corps by FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman and director Stephanie Roach, is the face of the Foundation's first exposition at a contemporary art fair, and only its second outside Chelsea.

"We were invited by the Chicago EXPO [sic] to come put on a non-selling exhibition here at the art fair," Fuhrman says. "Shaquille is an amazing person. Obviously, he is known as one of the greatest basketball players that has ever been on the planet, but he is constantly looking for ways to challenge himself."

In putting on an exhibition of portraiture, O'Neal and FLAG were inspired by his multifarious, still strong fan base. "Everyone that we know, old, young, internationally, American, no matter where you're from, everybody loves Shaq," Fuhrman explains. "And he said 'Well, I love everybody also.'"

As if to illustrate the point, standing just behind the media is as diverse an assemblage as one can hope to get on press preview day at a contemporary art fair, with various art world denizens joined by Aramark contractors and sundry non-glamour personnel, smartphones periscopic and smiles spreading.

While obviously the figurehead and main draw, O'Neal is quick to share credit for the exhibition with Fuhrman and Roach. "You guys already know this being from Chicago," he says, "you can't win a championship by yourself. So, I'm Jordan, this,"—he lays one great arm across Fuhrman—"is Pippen, and this,"—he swallows Roach whole—"is Phil Jackson."

O'Neal points out a Wayne Lawrence photo, Nechemaya Davis, a portrait of a black Orthodox Jew, as his favorite piece. He also draws the crowd's attention to Ben Durham's Chassity, a mugshot drawn with sentences describing her story, "To me, that's art."

The art seems to be rather well received by the various people who drop by; in keeping with the cosmopolitan humanism at SHAQ LOVES PEOPLE's core, the subjects, mediums, and artists selected are widely diversified—especially for the still rather homogeneous high end art sphere—and artists from the well established to the fresh-out-of-college are on display.

"There is a lot of great black artists represented," says Robin Dluzen, leonine-maned artist, critic (Art F City, Art Ltd.), extempore sportswriter, and devout Detroit sports fan. "And not just the ones you would expect." Dluzen gravitates towards the Lawrence pieces and Malick Sidibe, as well as a piece by Chicago based artist Carlos Rolon/Dzine, a black and white photo of Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran, arms lofted in triumph, set against a field of robin's egg blue and gold living room wallpaper. Jewelry dangles from Duran's wrists, savage and exquisite weapons that they are.

In the industry tradition of Warhol and Hirst, one could consider the entire Shaq-curates-an-exhibition-and-draws-diverse-crowd-to-historically-homogeneous-sphere project as art in itself. He is a man whose own consciousness is on permanent display, yet he is choosing to express himself through the work of others. The very presence of a man as large and as famous as Shaq raises questions about our relationships with scale and fame.

Either way, SHAQ LOVES PEOPLE seems a boon for EXPO, both with the regular set—"At least he's into art, you know?" says one apparently recent convert—and, as the media exposure makes clear, the general public. As O'Neal graciously takes photos and provides personal tours of his exposition, his diamond championship ring glitters—for perhaps the first time, not the most expensive thing in the room—while a massive showcasing of Annie Leibovitz photos stands comparative