Darren Goins
at Whitcher Projects

Darren Goings, 087br (tease_dragon) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

The CNC, like most technology, works off of information which we feed it—to bend the metaphor, it is what it eats, or, at least, its production is governed by its diet. Darren Goins, in his current solo show at Whitcher Projects, first casts acrylic panels against a craggy, mottled surface, then CNC-routes over the result, filling and accentuating the resulting crevices with paint and pigment. Goins then mounts each piece with the back, flat side facing the viewer, the transparency of the acrylic revealing only the underside, as if we are looking at the inner skin of a landscape.  

Feeding the CNC are Goins’ drawings: physical gestures recast as digital vectors. Each piece is doubled, the same drawing routed the same way, twice; Goins works over the surface of one while it’s twin finished routing. Goins’ doubling offers a subtle rejoinder to serial reproduction; paint and pigment index each reproduction as a unique, yet analogous, object.

Contrast this with Goins sculptures: tableaus of thin, curving neon, neon-lit vitrines, silicone-cast objects (erasers, the claw-feet of everyone’s favorite bathtub). The sculptures, or installations, or wall hangings, are both engaging and over-accessorized, curious and overly coded in interior symbology. The collect and clutter reads at times as a perverse tentativeness, belying an anxiety of omission. Reproduction here begets familiar objects as silicone doppelgangers— mimicry in contrast to the relief sculptures’ stubborn, subtle distinctions.

Goins’ relief sculptures are evocative, uniquely odd objects, reading in some instances as motherboards, in others as whooshing non-representations. Goins’ approach is a familiar one—the continual intertwining of flesh and the machine. Ultimately not archaic, Goins work strikes rather as alternate, parallel—the strange transmuted into the strangely familiar, and, finally, the uncanny.

Darren Goins: Busy Waiting runs October 29-November 23, 2016 at Whitcher Projects (1019 W Manchester Boulevard, Suite 101A, Inglewood, CA 90301).

Darren Goings, 086ar (salmon_jacket_treescape) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goins, Busy-Waiting (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goins, Busy-Waiting (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goings, 088ar (tuberous_crop) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goings, 087ar (tease_dragon) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goins, Busy-Waiting (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goins, Busy-Waiting (installation view) (2016). Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goings, 088br (tuberous_crop) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Darren Goings, 086br (salmon_jacket_treescape) (2016). Acrylic, urethane on etched acrylic panel, 54 x 42.5 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Whitcher Projects.

Aaron Horst is a writer and architect based in Los Angeles. He has written for Carla, Art Review, and Flash Art.

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