Horitzó's Barcelona Launch Demonstrates That Dinner Is an Art Form

There are few publicity efforts these days as impactful and distinctive as the brand dinner party. On April 30, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Barcelona, Spain, hosted a dinner to celebrate the launch of Horitzó, a new fine-dining catering service by avant-garde chef Paco Pérez and Hotel Arts Barcelona. As a new culinary venture, Horitzó combines elevated dining with contemporary art, illustrating how the best branding today is experiential.

The museum’s atrium was transformed to host this experience, with a grand banquet table spanning its length, flanked by silver chairs. Soft turquoise light bathed the walls, while luminous animations by Barcelona-based digital art agency Landscapes played across the table where notable guests from the city’s artistic milieu dined. 

The design layout within the museum’s atrium was intentional, and worked to reflect a sense of and connection to Barcelona’s current contemporary art world. At its center, the event showcased three reconstructions from the Ocells-estels (1982) series by Spanish textile artist Aurèlia Muñoz. Large sections of cloth were suspended from the atrium’s ceiling, meant to reflect shards of natural light. This preliminary display comes before a major exhibition that Muñoz will present at MACBA this November. Chef and mind behind Horitzó, Paco Pérez also added his own exhibition contribution, showcasing culinary artwork Exploracions a la Mar d’Amunt alongside food service, deepening Horitzó’s intended relationship to fine art. 

As exemplified through Horitzó’s efforts to “transcend the traditional concept of catering” to then “become an exercise in collective creation,” what is truly important in the experiential dinner is connection. A dinner party such as this—held within a famed cultural institution, attended by notable tastemakers in the community, and shaped by carefully crafted design—plays a crucial role in announcing a new project or brand to a city’s creative world. Horitzó and MACBA share a pursuit of experimental creativity, and this dinner’s unique design language creates an environment that cultivates true feeling.