Camouflage Means the Landscape Was Already Watching You
Katharina Busl’s Nothing Up My Sleeve at Paltz Biënnale Soest
At Landgoed De Paltz, a nineteenth-century estate on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug that opens its grounds to the public only once every two years, Katharina Busl builds a theater between the pines that nobody formally invited.
The curtains are agricultural plastic printed in military camouflage, gathered into theatrical swags and tied to the trunks. The stage holds three metal lattice trusses from which large sculptural forms are suspended, each sitting somewhere between a human ear, a speaker horn, and a flower.
Beneath the draped table, silicone face forms press through the fabric from underneath.
Katharina Busl
Nothing Up My Sleeve
Soest, Netherlands
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Saturday & Sunday, 11:00–18:00
Paltz 3, Soest (Entrance: Heezerspoor Westzijde)
Cecilia Rebergen, Veronique Hoedemakers
Robin Meyer
Courtesy the artist and PaltzBiënnale
info@paltzbiennale.nl
Nothing Up My Sleeve (2026) by Katharina Busl at Paltz Biënnale
Nothing Up My Sleeve examines a recurring dynamic of illusion and manipulation at Landgoed De Paltz.
The site-specific installation is a response to this year's edition theme, "Date the Estate," presented by the Paltz Biënnale in Soest (NL), an inquiry into our contemporary and past relationship with the estate and its grounds.
The site’s history is defined by a legacy of staging, moving from romanticized, man-made follies like a simulated waterfall, to the strategic military camouflage deployed during World War II, and now to the occurrence of the biennial art event. The installation transforms the terrain into a hybrid of a stage and a camp, joining the site's theatrical lineage.
A play between revealing and concealing, utilizing camouflage tarps draped like theatre curtains, blank staring silicone masks, a stage covered in pollen, and peculiar warning sirens shaped like ears, the work creates an uncanny atmosphere where the genuine and the fabricated blur.
The camouflage does not hide anything from the forest. The installation announces itself plainly from the path, curtains looped to trunks, the ear-forms catching grey light, the table pressing small faces through its own draping.
What the work conceals is more structural, a history of managed, romanticized, and at times militarized landscape, in which the aesthetic of nature has always required a director. Busl's theater is uncanny because it makes that management visible, and then declines to dismantle it. The curtains remain tied to the trees. What they frame keeps opening.
Instagram Katharina Busl
Paltzbiennale on Instagram
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