NEXT, a new invitational art fair installed in 150,000 square feet of space on the 7th floor of the Merchandise Mart, Chicago, April 25-28, 2008, to complement Art Chicago 2008, will offer focused curatorial visions of some of the most important developments in contemporary art.

NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations as well as galleries, project spaces, artist collectives, art publications and key private contemporary collections. A virtual clearing-house for the best of contemporary art, NEXT presents a new, selectively curated exhibition format that brings together—in one exhibition space—the most cutting-edge contemporary artists and arts organizations in the world.

More international than any other young fair of contemporary art to date, NEXT boasts galleries from every important art city in the world, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Warsaw and Bucharest. The largest collection to date of significant art trends ever assembled, NEXT presents approximately 160 of the best young galleries from every major international center of art production.

Featuring special artists projects, NEXT will additionally fill the whole floor of the Merchandise Mart with special projects by artists like Marco Maggi, Guy Ben-Ner, SIMPARCH, Graham Hudson, Ricky Swallow, Leo Villareal and Jonathan Schipper, among a host of others, along with special video booths, the presence of private entities like The West Collection and a curated exhibition by Renaissance Society Director and Documenta 11 curator, Susanne Ghez, as well as various bars and lounges designed to reinforce a vision of contemporary art that is accessible, cool and distinguished by topmost quality as well as an unflinching grip on the today’s culture, visual and otherwise.