Darren Goins was born in 1984 in North Carolina but now resides in Los Angeles, California. Goins is well known for his unique style and aesthetic, which involves the combination of digital technologies and traditional painting methods to create abstract paintings. Working with a wide range of media–printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, neon–Goins’ art manages to capture the anxiety of the Information Age in both color and form.

Goins graduated from UNC Charlotte with a BFA in Photography and Printmaking and a minor in Art History. Goins soon moved to New York, and later Los Angeles where he currently lives and works.

Goins’ style utilizes computer software, like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Paint, in order to etch the image onto an acrylic panel using a CNC carver. He then paints over the surface, which in turn becomes the backside of the painting as the reverse side of the clear panel faces the viewer. Goins in this manner appears to be tricking the eyes of the viewers with his work; portraying the pieces as a base relief in reverse as if the painting is somehow bubbling up from behind the acrylic panel.

Goins’ pieces also confront the audience with how one can engage with, and utilizes, technology in art. Through his embrace of technical chance and his flexible, manual process, something organic peeks through from, within these images. We are again left to consider what role human interaction has in painting. With these collections, there is neither a true rejection of the human influence, nor a celebration of touch, but some strange in-between on the cusp of a new status quo. The ways that the routed drawings interact with each other give off the sense that there is a transitory liminal space within the works. In Goins’ paintings we can see the ghost of humanity filtered through digital media, fluidly weaved in space. He has been exhibited internationally, including Hezi Cohen Gallery in Tel Aviv, and here at Martin Lawrence Galleries, La Jolla.