Goels briefly attended the Akademie der Lustige Graphiken before moving on to the somewhat more prestigious Hochschule für Ernste Kunst, where he studied with locally renowned educator and performance artist Dirk Endlos. Under the influence of Endlos, Goels created early performance pieces involving string and pork products which explored "the pathologies of transportation." These early performance pieces went largely unnoticed, even in local art circles, because Goels insisted on erecting opaque screens between the performers and the audience, possibly owing to intense self-consciousness about his physical "Unvollkommenheiten" stemming from childhood injuries. Goels appears to have broken with his mentor shortly after leaving the Hochschule (reportedly over a disagreement over the proper wine to serve with Medisterpolse) at which point Goels' signature style begins to emerge.

Goels mature style is characterized by grids of small images - typically frontal portraits or close-ups of body parts - that can be variously sorted and arranged. While early work betrayed Goels' obsession with transportation, these later works represent a powerful critique of the institutions of late capitalism at the same time that they explore and define what Goels calls the "'Hegemonie der hübschen Bohrung" or "hegemony of the pretty hole."

Goels' most famous work Dank für die Probe Bitte - a sixteen panel work depicting the Board of Directors of Belgian chocolatier Sucrerie Chère - was a cause célébre at the 2001 Kowloon Biennial when one of the subjects of the work insisted his portrait be removed because it made him "look fat." Schlammklappe is typical of Goels' work in series, reflecting his tendency to make large numbers of discrete images on a given theme which, collectively, make up a single work. Goels' willingness to allow a given work to comprise, in a particular context, all or part of a series has been seen as a radical attempt to destabilize the unity of the art object and to challenge the authority of the artist. Others have seen the practice as the product of lazy or sloppy execution.