Art Cologne

Sakhile&Me is excited to present new works by visual and sensory artist Jerry Helle in the NEUMARKT section of Art Cologne from 6 – 9 November 2025. Informally titled The Egg Came First, this solo presentation relishes in the delicate strength it takes to trust intuition, in a world that often rewards certainty and control. The exhibition primarily features the artist’s new egg tempera works but also includes a selection of paintings from his Bird and Atomic series as well as two sculptures made with found objects.

In The Egg Came First, Jerry Helle begins experimenting with egg tempera (a technique of making paints dating back to the 16th century). Mixing his own paint from recipes with pigment, egg yolk and egg white, Helle improvises with these stripped-back materials through his gestural mark-making, leaving some of the canvases unsealed and playing with layered translucency and negative space. The new experimental egg tempera series includes one self-standing sculptural work made with a base of two painted bricks and a 2-meter wooden pole, all traced with egg tempera markings. In Helle’s words, "The act of repurposing, for me, becomes both a gesture of care and critique, allowing materials to retain their histories while existing in a fresh context."

The Egg Came First unfolds over the four days at Art Cologne, combining works from Helle’s older series featuring his signature "bird-like" canvas cutouts, his gestural acrylic, oil and oil stick paintings inspired by the atomic energy, and these aforementioned experimental egg tempera paintings. Each piece invites the viewer into the in-between space where instinct meets resistance, where creation becomes a way to process, adapt, and transform. Rather than assert fixed expertise, the artist leans into rawness, allowing process and feeling to lead. The resulting works speak to the often-invisible labor of self-direction and the vulnerability required to move forward, often without explicit or external validation.

Jerry Helle is an autodidactic artist living and working between Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Duisburg. In his work, Helle delves into themes of freedom, home, and belonging. Drawing from personal experiences, his practice critically examines cultural value systems, prompting reflection on universal truths and seeking to uncover spaces of ambiguity and polarization. Helle is deeply interested in the grey areas, the in-between moments that often go unnoticed. His work explores those quiet pauses where life shifts but hasn’t yet settled. These ambiguous instances, where clarity blurs and emotions collide, form the core of his artistic inquiry. Through them, he questions how meaning is formed, lost, or transformed in the spaces between events.