Heike Gallmeier's book Selbst im Grün (Self in Green) documents her re-staging of a work by
the Italian Renaissance painter Giorgione, The Tempest. Editor Petra Schaefer, Dr Hackerodt Fondation, 
contextualizes the two artworks in a broader context alongside contemporary works by
other artists such as ANAGOOR, Louise Bourgeois, Manuel Gualandi, Anselm Kiefer, Peggy
Milleville, Gerhard Richter and Thomas Zitzwitz.

"As a visual artist, how do you position yourself in relation to the painting tradition when you
refer to masterpieces from the history of art? This question presents itself when considering
the staged photographs and installations of Berlin-based painter and sculptor Heike
Gallmeier, who explores female figures from the Venetian Renaissance. The focus is not only
on the formal and contextual dependence on the original, but rather on the personification of
the female figure by the artist herself. After all she embodies, within the historical pictorial
form to which she refers, the socio-cultural autonomy of an adult, educated, and independent
woman of the twenty-first century. By lending the figures not only her body, but also her
stance and attitude, she challenges their role. Heike Gallmeier acts as a cross-epochal
mediator in various religious contexts, for instance as an Old Testament figure (after Jacopo
Tintoretto), as the Mother of God (after Giovanni Bellini), or as a martyr (after Vittore
Carpaccio). This is not the case with the 2010 work Selbst im Grün (Self in Green). It is based on
an enigmatic painting featuring an unnamed female protagonist. The famous La Tempesta
(The Tempest) by Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (1477/78–1510), is now kept in
the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. In Heike Gallmeier’s staged photograph Selbst im Grün
(Self in Green), which is informed by Giorgione’s work, the chromaticity of nature likewise
predominates, shifting between dark green and brown, while the pale blue sky remains
rather restrained. The motif that gives Giorgione’s painting its title, the thunderstorm, is
indeed referenced – two bright white streaks in the blue sky are serve as a reminder – but the
central element of the image is the woman in nature, who is portrayed by the artist herself."
[Petra Schaefer: Heike Gallmeier: Selbst sein (Being self), 2025]