ASHER HARTMAN
Founder/Director/Writer
Asher Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist, director, writer, and maker of live performances. His works, which combine strategies of theater and performance art, grapple with social and political issues in an era of chronic crisis. His works are dense, visual, poetic embodied texts, infused with clown and cringe humor, evidence of trance and psychic journeying, set in engulfing installations designed to disorient, unnerve, and elicit strong feeling.
A great deal of his work was developed with the support of Machine Project, Los Angeles from 2010-2017 and now with Dena Beard.
He is the founder and chief beneficiary of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of artist-actors for whom he has written since 2010. He is also one half of the performative duo Krystal Krunch (with Haruko Tanaka now deceased), who taught intuition-building work to artists, activists, and interested others. Asher Hartman received his BA in Theater at UCLA and his MFA in Studio Arts at CalArts
Recent performances and plays include the six part traveling play, “The Dope Elf,” 2019-2021) lived in and performed on site at Yale Union, Portland, now as six films premiering at The Lab, San Francisco and soon to be live performance at The Lab (Fall 2021); "The Lost Privilege Company" at USC Visions & Voices and Thieter at Pieter; "Sorry Atlantis: Eden's Achin' Organ Seeks Revenge" at Machine Project, Los Angeles; "The Silver, The Black, The Wicked Dance," at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); "Mr. Akita" at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA); Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, and Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, New York; "Purple Electric Play (PEP!)" at Machine Project, Los Angeles; "Glass Bang" at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture's RM Schindler Fitzpatrick-Leland House as part of Machine Project's engagement in "Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A." also with Cannonball in Miami and Southern Exposure in San Francisco (2013). Other recent works include "See What Love The Father Has Given Us," Machine Project, Los Angeles, 2012; "The All Stars of Non-Violet Communication" at Human Resources, LACE, and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles (2011); "Annie Okay" at The Hammer Museum (with Machine Project, 2010), and "Bad Thing" at Sea and Space Explorations (2010). Performances as Krystal Krunch (with Haruko Tanaka) have been presented with Machine Project at The Hayward Gallery (London), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburg); Real Art Ways (Hartford), Southern Exposure (San Francisco), Spaces (Cleveland), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, (St. Louis); The Philbrook Museum of Art (Tulsa); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, Arkansas); Extrapool (Netherlands) and The Vincent Price Art Museum (Los Angeles). Asher's film/video works have been exhibited at MIX/NYC, Migrating Forms (New York), Images (Toronto), Recontres International (Paris/Berlin); The Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila); Beijing Open Performance (China); The London Underground Film Festival; and The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, among other venues.
Asher Hartman’s first book of plays, “Mad Clot on a Holy Bone: Memories of a Psychic Theater” was published by X Artists’ Books in 2020.
In addition to his artistic practice, Asher is a practicing psychic and has been reading for individuals since 2001.
Image above by Ian Byers-Gamber
Read more about Asher and his practice and see each production for more info!
The Dope Elf Written and Directed by Asher Hartman, Performed by Gawdafful National Theater, six films and essay about The Dope Elf. Online until August 2021.
“Having Once Been Beautiful,” by Martin Harries, Los Angeles Review of Books, September 6, 2023.
“Stuck in the Same Muck: Journeying through Asher Hartman’s Psychic Theater,” by Catherine G. Wagely, MOMUS, February 11, 2021.
“Now Playing! Gawdafful National Theatre Acts Out at The Lab,” by Michael Fox, KQED, June 24, 2021.
“The Gawdafful Plays of Asher Hartman” by Janet Sarbanes, American Theater, October 15, 2020
“It is Dense and Bears Repetition: Notes on Rehearsals of Asher Hartman’s The Dope Elf” by Neha Choksi, Riting.org
“Meet an Artist Monday: Asher Hartman” by Shana Nys Dambrot, LA Weekly, May 25, 2020
“50 Artists Step Into the Role of President,” by Matt Stromberg, Hyperallergic, September 15, 2020
“A Reality to Call Our Own” by Rossen Ventzislavov, X-Tra, Winter 2019, Vol 21, Number 2.
“An Absurdist Play About Art-making at Hauser & Wirth,” by Matt Stromberg Hyperallergic, March 2, 2017
“A Conversation with Asher Hartman on The Silver, the Black, the Wicked Dance,” José Luis Blondet, Unframed, LACMA, April 30, 2016
"Skin of the Actor, Teeth of the Artist"
By Asher Hartman for The Brooklyn Rail, July 11, 2016
“Asher Hartman” by Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, ArtNews, March 12, 2015
“Asher Hartman’s Ritualistic Marathons,” by Alicia Eler, Art21 Magazine, Feb 11, 2015
"Asher Hartman with Carol Cheh"
By Carol Cheh for Coronagraph, February 2015
“The Ecstasy of Ambiguity: Asher Hartman’s Purple Electric Play” KCET, by Sue Bell Yank, December 8, 2014
"Watch Famous Gamble House Get A Stunning Psychic Reading"
By Biana Barragan for Curbed LA, October 3, 2014
“Asher Hartman and the Puppets of Revolution,” by Matt Stromberg, Hyperallergic, December 15, 2014