Asher Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist, director, writer, and creator of live performances. His works operate in the charged space between performance art, experimental theater, and immersive installation. In this sphere of intensely amplified perception, Hartman generates works that grapple with the myriad of social and political issues that dominate this current era of chronic crisis. Often situating personal and emotional history in relation with the ideologies that structure Western culture, his works are dense, visual, poetic, embodied texts, where clown and cringe humor are layered upon moments of desperate rage and arousal. In every work, Hartman implants evidence of his own trance and psychic journeying, set in engulfing installations designed to disorient, unnerve, and elicit indelible feelings.

Hartman received his BA in Theater from University of California, Los Angeles and his MFA in Studio Arts from CalArts, where he has since become a faculty member in the CalArts School of Theater. He has also taught at Otis College of Art and Design, and University of California, Riverside. He is the founder and chief of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of artist-actors for whom he has written and directed since 2010. Hartman was also one half of the performative duo Krystal Krunch (with Haruko Tanaka), and over the course of their collaboration the two artists taught intuition-building work to artists, activists, and interested members of the public. From 1999-2005, Hartman co-directed Crazy Space, a performance art venue that featured artists such as Dark Bob, Mariel Caranza, Mario Gardener, Jamie McMurry, Johana Went, Kristina Wong, Liz Young, and Paul Zaloom.

Hartman's recent projects include The Mommy Leaks the Floor at New Hollywood Theater, Los Angeles, CA (2025); Blessed with Switch with Jasmine Orpilla at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2024) and University of California, Irvine, The Art of Performance (2024); It’s Better to Start Out Ugly at JOAN, Los Angeles, CA (2023) and The Lab, San Francisco, CA (2023). Past Gawdafful National Theater performances include The Dope Elf, Yale Union, Portland, OR (2019) revised as Organized Around the Erotics of Doing You In at The Lab, San Francisco, CA (2021); Sorry, Atlantis, Or Eden’s Achin’ Organ Seeks Revenge, Machine Project, Los Angeles, CA (2017); The Silver, the Black, the Wicked Dance, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2016); and Annie Okay!, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2010). Hartman's recent publications include Mad Clot on a Holy Bone (X Artists’ Books, 2020); Female Hallucinations, Folk Horses, and Gaunt Motherfuckers (Cambridge University Press, 2022).