Asher Hartman is a visual artist, writer, director, 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 feelings. Asher Hartman is the director and founder of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of visual artists, actors, and performance artists with whom he has created since 2010. Much of his work was nurtured by Machine Projects, Los Angeles.
Recent projects include “Blessed with Switch” with Jasmine Orpilla (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2024; UCI, The Art of Performance, 2024); “It’s Better to Start Out Ugly” at JOAN (2023) and The Lab, San Francisco, (2023) and “After I seen that figure I don’t have no consciousness about it” (Alto Beta, 2023). Recent Gawdafful performances include “The Dope Elf,” Yale Union, Portland, Oregon (2019) revised as “Organized Around the Erotics of Doing You In” at The Lab (2021). Recent publications include “Lifes” at the Hammer Museum (2022); “Mad Clot on a Holy Bone” (X Artists’ 2020); “Female Hallucinations, Folk Horses, and Gaunt Motherfuckers,” TDR (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Past performances include “The Lost Privilege Company,” Visions and Voices, USC, LA (2018); “Sorry, Atlantis: Or Eden’s Achin’ Organ Seeks Revenge,” Machine Project, LA (2017); “Mr. Akita,” Hauser & Wirth, LA, (2017); the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2017); “The Silver, the Black, the Wicked Dance,” commissioned by LACMA (2016); Mr. Akita at The Tang Art Museum, NY (2015), Purple Electric Play! Machine Project, (2014), “Glass Bang” at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture’s RM Schindler’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House as part of Machine Project’s engagement in the Getty Museum’s “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.” (2013) and with Cannonball in Miami as “The Florida Room” and Southern Exposure in San Francisco (2013), “See What Love the Father Has Given Us,” Machine Project, (2012), “All Stars of Non-Violet Communication” (LACE, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources 2011), and “Annie Okay! (The Hammer Museum, LA, 2010).
Asher Hartman and his collaborative partner Haruko Tanaka (now deceased) conducted numerous workshops on intuitive practice including at Carleton College (2022); C/O Berlin (2018); Crystal Bridges, Arkansas (2018); Philbrook Museum, Tulsa (2018); Gasworks, London (2017); The Pulitzer Art Museum (St. Louis, 2016); Perez Art Museum (2014); Real Art Ways (Hartford, 2013), Extrapool (Netherlands, 2013);The Hayward Gallery (London, 2012), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2012), The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburg, 2012), among many other venues and numerous workshops with Machine Project. Recent teaching includes Otis College of Art and Design, CalArts; Art Center, Pomona College, USC, UC Riverside, Ox-Bow School of Arts in Michigan, and The Golden Dome Mystery School.
