Amorales works in a variety of media, including video, animation, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance. Much of his work examines contemporary Mexican culture and values.

Since 1998, Amorales has been building his "Liquid Archive", a digital database of his drawings in the form of vector graphics which he uses produce visual compositions in various media. The graphics, birds, spiders, trees, kneeling figures in blacks, reds, and grays reappear throughout his work and provide his signature style. In 2007, Amorales lent his "Liquid Archive" to the Dutch graphic design duo Mevis & Van Deursen (Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen) who collaborated with Amorales to produce the book "Carlos Amorales: Liquid Archive, Why Fear The Future".

His early works also featured masked Mexican wrestlers inspired by the Lucha libre performing in wrestling rings throughout the world. In 2003, the wrestling performance Amorales v. Amorales was staged at the Tate Modern in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His animation piece, Useless Wonder (2006) was shown at the Miami Basel art fair. Recently, Amorales has had solo exhibitions at the MALBA in Buenos Aires, the Milton Keynes Gallery in Milton Keynes UK, Yvon Lambert Paris, the MUCA in Mexico City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 2008, his exhibition Discarded Spider toured at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. For this show, Amorales also staged a performance with the Cincinnati Ballet.