Art, especially comics, editorial cartoons, and science fiction reflects our socio-political structures while imagining new ways to exist; this is my goal in making artwork regarding climate change.
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​I am intrigued by the tension in scientific and political debates and the collision of contemporary issues and traditional values regarding environmentalism: specifically, protecting humans versus preserving nature and the mitigation and adaptation debate. Scientists diverge on whether mitigation or adaptation is the most appropriate response to climate change. Proponents of mitigation seek to reduce anthropogenic impacts on the Earth’s climate; adaptation, rather, attempts to respond to climate-related damages that do occur. Environmentalism and conservation go hand in hand, but climate change is a world issue that affects us on global and personal levels through economic and social challenges.

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Organizing image hierarchy via layering, selective coloring, and the manipulation of visual perspective highlights the different aspects of climate change and the multiple literal perspectives needed to tackle it. In this way, the art acts as a framing device for the scientific and political issues. My work expresses a narrative quality and contains vivid colors inspired by a love of comic books, sci-fi and political cartoons.

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There is no returning to the pre-human version of nature. Research shows that has not existed for tens of thousands of years.[1] But we can make progress in how we practice environmentalism, economics and politics, and art. Through art, I am attempting to push our approach to science and nature to be more expansive and socially oriented.

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My work is inspired by the IPCC Special Report 2018:
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf
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and the Green New Deal:
https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf

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[1] Boivin, Nicole L, et al. Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America. 2016. https://www.pnas.org/content/113/23/6388

My most recent prints expand the relationship between the human body and surface through the lens of skin and clothing. Each work is comprised of varied combinations of pressure-printed fabrics and impressions of human skin on paper that take the shape of sewing patterns. I tear my prints after the first layers are established and follow the tears with shuffling, reassembling, and reprinting before stitching the pieces together. The prints are a reflection on the role of surface as a boundary. They are barriers that capture, like a fine net or filter, the actions of an artist at work. The actions themselves permeate the paper, but the evidence of the experience is registered—or printed—onto the paper’s surface. They are left behind as affirmations of life.

Carlos Llobet Artist’s Statement
I’m a Costa Rican printmaker, strongly influenced by street art as well as German Expressionism. Currently, I’m exploring the idea of going beyond the printed editions but still maintaining the intrinsic characteristic of multiplicity in print media to create compositions and unique works of art using collage, painting and weaving the prints; this came about from his need to express new ideas that couldn’t be done in traditional print media.
A significant theme is the portrayal of life in the streets of his home, San José. The prints are a snapshot of the people who earn a living by doing informal jobs, lottery salespeople, shoe shiners, street musicians and car watchmen among many others. By using this subject matter, I intend to bring to the forefront the plight of those who are struggling economically in an ever-increasing world where the gap between the upper class and the lower is widening.
For the last year and a half, I have been exploring this widening gap between the rich and the poor and how the history of Latin America has perpetuated this economic inequality; as well furthering the exploration on the limits he can take printmaking, not just in size but also in its application for installations and public art.
The intention to shine a light on the shrinking middle class of Costa Rica, a segment of the population who is burdened with supporting through taxation corrupt politicians and corporation, but at the same time bombarded nonstop through the media with mages of a lifestyle that is increasingly harder to achieve.
My recent work consists of large format relief prints of people, he has encountered back in his home country of Costa Rica. The human figures are carved in a realistic manner and printed by hand on fabric. The characters are printed individually, which creates the opportunity for an infinite number of different compositions in which they can be arranged and create different narratives depending on the combination of figures.
This new work will be a five to seven-year project where I will continuously add more figures to create a more complex relationship between the prints, space and the audience. I intend to display the figures in outside areas through public interventions.