The elevator doors that open onto Gallery Four, on the fourth floor of the H&H Building, reveal a striking scene. Three large-scale color photographs—one of Death Valley, one of the Mojave Desert, and one of Monument Valley—border the room. The images are printed on vinyl and appear in the guise of meticulously reproduced Clear Channel billboards, complete with billboard lighting and serial numbers along the bottom. (Walk around the back of the billboards and the illusion persists.) Three sets of worn, duct-taped Ford F-150 truck seats face them, as if lined up on a highway or at the drive-in. An aural wash of automated metal-brushing-metal and a rhythmic clanking are audible from the rooms beyond. Welcome to Cowboys and Engines, a solo show by Gallery Four founder Dustin Carlson.

Carlson, a bearded, unassuming 33-year-old, moves about the space with an accustomed ease. He has lived and worked there since 1996, when he and fellow artist Jason Hughes moved in as teenagers. “We noticed that there was a lot of talent in Baltimore from all over the country, and there was really no place for them to show here,” Carlson says. “A few alternative spaces would show up, but they were really not bringing it to a professional level, not a space you’d want do put on your resume.”

Fifteen years ago, what is now a 10,000-square-foot wood-floored, white-walled series of rooms with six artist-in-residence live/work spaces was an unfinished warehouse. But Carlson and others were soon renovating and showing their work there, and in 2000, Gallery Four was officially born. It has since steadily gained renown, featuring shows that have included the likes of Dan Steinhilber and Gary Kachadourian, as well as artists from across the country and beyond. But despite Carlson’s long involvement with the gallery, Cowboys and Engines is the first solo show of his own work at Gallery Four. “Self-promotion is a weird thing, and I don’t know how it’s going to be perceived by other artists and the community at large,” he says. “Does it sort of defeat the purpose of the work that you’ve been trying to do to create this space?”

Skeptics are unlikely to hold a grudge once they’ve seen Carlson’s show. Composed of just five large pieces, it bears the imprint of a skilled artist and curator. From “Vista,” the billboard installation, to the last piece, an eerie tableau of working replicas of oil pumps, the source of most of the ambient noise, one has the feeling a story is unfolding. That story, in part, concerns the American Dream, its commodification and dependence on finite resources. But there is an undercurrent of beauty throughout, because the pieces themselves are so well-crafted and thoughtfully designed. Carlson doesn’t drag in an existing billboard or oil pump or ice machine or exhaust pipe; he recreates them, warped slightly by his own aesthetic and his memory of the object. (His work is so convincing that two tipsy women at the show’s opening tried to wrest open the nonfunctioning door of the ice machine—titled “Polar Ice”—in order to insert a bag of melting ice that was actually part of the piece.) The results have a prototypical, iconic feel, and a craftsmanship that commands attention.

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