Alliance (WT-6)
from The Triumph of Romanticism
20" x 20"
acrylic on canvas
2016
Exhibitions
Nicole Longnecker Gallery, Houston, Texas, The Triumph of Romanticism, September 10 - October 15, 2016
Houston, Texas, Visitation, January 14, 2017
Houston, Texas, November Open Studio, November 10, 2018
 

Alliance (WT-6) closes the constellation with a vision drawn from cinema’s earliest myth of the future. The humanoid robot, seated in symmetry and encircled by glowing rings, is lifted directly from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)—a silent film that imagined a dystopia of industrial control, class division, and seductive illusion. The robot, known as Maria, was not built to liberate. She was built to manipulate. Her perfection is not human—it is engineered.


The white star above her head marks the chromatic zone of the work—white as purity, as blankness, as the color of idealized neutrality. The numeral “6” in the bottom corner situates the piece within the Alliance constellation, signaling its final position in a sequence of chosen alignments.


Unlike the romantic kiss of Alliance (BL-1) or the aspirational smile of Alliance (GR-2), Alliance (WT-6) offers a fantasy of transcendence through design. It is not emotional or ideological—it is mechanical. And yet, the image is stylized, curated, and mythic. The robot is a mirror. A projection of what we might become, or what we wish to escape.


Alliance (WT-6) reveals how even the future can be romanticized. The dream is no longer of love or power—it is of control. Of shedding complexity for clarity. Of becoming the image itself.