Erika Diehl’s paintings reflect the experiential properties of time through layered gestures and luminous mediums. For her show at BasketShop, Diehl has arranged a collection of paintings titled AETAS from works created during the current pandemic in order to focus on this particular facet of her practice. AETAS is Latin for “time” as defined by age or era. Using an ur-language such as Latin for the title, Diehl points to the position painting finds itself in so often as a visual language rooted in the zeitgeist of the current moment.

The paintings hold time, approached from different directions: as the measured, physical time required to create the work, and the mirror time it takes to read the painting. For this show, the artist is asking us to consider this current body of work as a window into our complicated relationship to the experience of time during these years of lockdowns, closed borders, and isolation.

Erika Diehl earned her MFA from the L. E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland College Institute of Art. She uses time as a medium and context in her abstract painting. Through a phenomenological approach to her work, she engages the struggle of painting against the nature of language to materialize the experience of time as a lived, contingent process.

Diehl has exhibited widely since 2003 including five solo shows in the last decade and more than 20 group shows. Her work has been exhibited at the Las Cruces Art Museum, Las Cruces, NM; Lyons Weir Gallery, New York, NY; Homeland Security Domestic Gallery, Dallas, TX; and in the exhibitions On Loan - Formalities, juried by Cara Ober, Area 405, Baltimore, MD; and Smörgåsbord, juried by Paddy Johnson, at Gallery CA, Baltimore, MD run at the time by Deana Haggag. Her most recent solo show, Khôra, at Marfa Open in Marfa, Texas ran from July 2nd through August 1st, 2021. On October 9th, 2021, her solo show AETAS will open at Basketshop Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.