Waking up this morning, I noticed that the death toll attributed to the outbreak had risen since Friday and that the virus – which has also been detected in the United States - is being called a possible pandemic by the WHO. The streets were very quiet for a Saturday morning and the odd person we passed on the way through town in a taxi was wearing the government-issued blue surgical masks to cover their faces to avoid contagion. But there was no panic, no wrestling in the streets for the last face mask, just a sort of eerie quiet – eerie for Mexico City, which is always a seething mass of traffic and people on a Saturday.

So I was surprised to find that a gallery opening in the posh neighbourhood of San Miguel de Chapultepec, part of the city-wide Zona Maco contemporary art festival, was swarming with people. I at least expected to see fashionable versions of the blue face masks being combined with the latest clothes labels, but it wasn’t so. Of the 500 or so attendees at the event (download the details here), perhaps 10 of them were covering their mouths, and some of those had their masks pulled down around their necks. 

Risking their lives for art? Well, the new Gabriel Orozco work unveiled at the recently-opened contemporary gallery Kurimanzutto was rather smashing. No one I spoke to felt that the risk of contracting a possibly deadly form of flu was as high as the repercussions of missing out on one of the most trendy dates in the Mexico City art diary.

Annabell Villareal, a 45-year-old business woman at the launch, had rather smartly woven her face mask into her outfit of tight black pants and fitted white jacket, covering her lower face with a white scarf in the style of a bandit rather than a doctor.

“There is a lot of risk – we’re on alert,” she said.

“But by taking precautions such as covering the mouth…we can go on existing with other people.”

Then it was on to Del Valle, the middle class neighbourhood where I live, after passing through the trendier Condesa on the way. The streets in Condesa were unusually quiet and the restaurants had a lot of empty tables. We went to two major emergency rooms in Del Valle – the IMSS on Gabriel Mancera, and the ISSTE hospital called “20 de Noviembre.” Both of them had people their awaiting attention, but nothing like the lines AP was reporting yesterday.

We got a number of taxis during the day, none of the drivers of which reported seeing anything out of the ordinary other than the eerie quiet I mentioned earlier. The theory of one of our drivers was that Mexico’s working classes pay such little attention to health scares and government-issued orders that it is only the dramatic kind of measures being taken by the Government now that spur them into action and taking precautions. 

Not only have schools been closed and soccer matches been cancelled, but President Felipe Calderon signed this directive which gives the Government the freedom to implement any measure it sees necessary to prevent, control and combat the virus, and that includes entering private houses and businesses.  

The government reaction has definitely caught people’s attention. Let’s just hope that such severe measures prove themselves necessary over the coming days.

Check my mate Daniel Hernandez at his blog Intersections for more on Mexico City today…..

Image: Annabell Villareal, a 45-year-old business woman at the launch, had rather smartly woven her face mask into her outfit of tight black pants and fitted white jacket, covering her lower face with a white scarf in the style of a bandit rather than a doctor. ”There is a lot of risk – we’re on alert,” she said. ”But by taking precautions such as covering the mouth…we can go on existing with other people.” Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times and MexicoReporter.com.

Cool young Mexicans mixed with a manicured, international crowd; back-combed hair and skinny jeans mingled with manicured, slender women, over-sized glasses and fake gold handbags. It was so retro, and so now.

Rather than sipping champagne from long-stemmed glasses, guests sucked fruit juice out of cardboard cartons. American English blended with Spanish in this elegant and luminous inside-outside space that looks a world away from the timber yard that it once was. Visitors start inside the building but under an open sky, then walk into a showroom covered by a ceiling of fogged glass that lets in the daylight and is supported by grand, wooden beams reminiscent of a farmer’s barn.

Then it’s outside again and through a tiny, Japanese-style garden and up the back steps into a smaller space hung with paintings and photographs.

Kurimanzutto boasts a collection of some of Mexico’s most up and coming contemporary artists, including Damián Ortega, Daniel Guzmán (see video below) and Gabriel Orozco. To the uninitiated, the main showroom might be reminiscent of a secondhand store, with installations including a suitcase full of ’70s style pornographic photos and a cork pin board covered with photographs –- all mounted on bare metal bookshelves. But a closer look proves more fulfilling, and the choice of such basic furniture to present the exhibits was, of course, part of the message.

“For this exhibition we have decided to evoke the testimony of an incidental –- yet fundamental –- protagonist: the bookshelf living in almost any artist’s studio,” reads the introduction handed out at the opening.

“This piece of furniture is confident and witness to the working processes of its owner, neatly reflecting his/her interests, obsessions, references and current ideas…. The shelf is equally storeroom, shelter and plinth.”

Attendees seemed impressed.

Daniela Hernandez, 23, a law student, welcomed the space, saying, “It’s really important that they’re changing the gallery spaces here because they really need it and there’s a lot to do.”

“This is the most important contemporary art gallery in Mexico,” said Mariano Rocha, a 26-year-old fashion magazine editor.

That’s not strictly true. La Coleccion Jumex, situated about half an hour north of the city in the gritty, industrial neighborhood of Ecatepec, is 15,000 square feet of Latin American art open to the public and owned by Eugenio Lopez Alonso, heir to the Mexican Jumex juice fortune. But Jumex’s is a permanent collection and although widely regarded as one of the world’s most important public showcases of Latin American art, nothing is for sale.

Kurimanzutto, on the other hand, is a commercial gallery, so comparing the two is rather like comparing apples and oranges. However, for people who are looking, not shopping, Kurimanzutto does have the advantage of being located more centrally, and is just a stone’s throw from Mexico City’s central park, Bosque de Chapultepec.

Abdon Flores, a Paris-based Mexican fashion designer at Saturday’s launch, said that he enjoyed the size of the new gallery: “It’s huge –- that’s important for Mexico because galleries here are usually small.”

Flores’ companion Anna Rockwell, a 27-year-old American artist, said: “I like the idea that it’s collective. It raises a new way of structuring art shows that’s not so much about individual ego and ‘I’m making it as an international art star and you’re not,’ but more about working together and sharing ideas.

“It’s more of a dialogue, which for me is a lot more interesting because that’s the most interesting thing about art.”

Click on the video for a glimpse of part of Daniel Guzmán’s installation at the Kurimanzutto gallery.
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Click here for more photos of the event on Flickr.

Photos: The beautiful people, top, are out in force Saturday afternoon in Mexico City for the opening of the new Kurimanzutto contemporary art gallery in the San Miguel de Chapultepec neighborhood. Daniela Hernandez, 23, a law student, and Mariano Rocha, 26, a fashion magazine editor, middle, are among those at the launch. Others attending the exhibition opening, bottom, include Abdon Flores, a Paris-based Mexican fashion designer, and American artist Anna Rockwell. Credits: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

This post was written for La Plaza, the Los Angeles Times blog on Latin America.

* This post was edited at 12:27pm Mexico City time. La Coleccion Jumex is not a commercial gallery, unlike Kurimanzutto.