Mike Steiner and the Pulse of Contemporary Art: Innovator of Video and Painting

What defines the magnetic force of contemporary art? Immersing oneself in the oeuvre of Mike Steiner, it becomes immediately apparent: energy, experimentation, and the thrill of redefining boundaries. Bridging the tactile intensity of painting with the conceptual intrigue of video and live performance, Mike Steiner left a distinct mark on Berlin’s avant-garde landscape—his legacy reverberates through the halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof, into the present.

Explore original contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner here

Any reflection on Mike Steiner must begin with his relentless urge to experiment. Early on, as a precocious 17-year-old, he debuted at Berlin’s Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, already signaling a will to move beyond convention. The evolution from early figurative and abstract painting towards the moving image is characteristic of Steiner’s restless search for expressive authenticity. While many contemporary artists pivoted to new media tentatively, Steiner leapt: his brush was swapped for a camera, his canvas for the liminal spaces of Berlin where art, performance, and life became indistinguishable.

Fascinatingly, the roots of Mike Steiner’s practice are anchored in the crosscurrents of international exchange. After formative years in Berlin, a pivotal stint in 1960s New York exposed him to the luminaries of Fluxus and Happening: names like Allan Kaprow—father of Happenings—and Al Hansen emerge as touchstones. These encounters cultivated not only an openness to multimedia experiments, but also a collaborative ethos. In a sense, Steiner anticipated the collective spirit now ubiquitous in contemporary arts Berlin, blending friendship, space, and creation into a living laboratory.

Upon his return to Berlin, Steiner swiftly established iconic epicenters for artistic dialog: the legendary Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie—hubs comparable in spirit to New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Both sites hosted a revolving door of artists, thinkers, and provocateurs. Visitors ranged from Joseph Beuys to Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, Ulay, and even Robert Motherwell in earlier years—mapping a network that spanned both continents and mediums.

The historic significance of the Studiogalerie cannot be overstated. Not just a gallery but a cross-disciplinary forge, it provided resources for video production and staged boundary-pushing performances. Among its most notorious episodes: the 1976 collaboration with Ulay, where the duo staged the removal of Spitzweg’s “Der arme Poet” from the Neue Nationalgalerie—an audacious artwork interrogating possession, power, and institutional authority. The resulting video documentation, produced by Steiner, represents a high-water mark of performative intervention—a continuing reference for students of performance and installation art.

The legacy of these years saturates the Hamburger Bahnhof’s holdings: Steiner’s donated video archive includes rare early works by Marina Abramovi?, Bill Viola, Richard Serra, Nam June Paik, Gary Hill, and others. These tapes form a unique, living timeline of video and performance art, illuminating how Berlin emerged as a nexus for contemporary experimentation. Few collections, even globally, offer such a textured portrait of the genre’s evolution.

Steiner’s own artistic series from this period reflect a chameleonic approach. Video works blend with painting, as seen in his so-called “Painted Tapes”—visual hybrids where movement and pigment interlace. Other periods saw forays into installation, photography, copy art, and Minimalist interventions, each underpinned by an inquisitive skepticism: Is the medium merely a conduit, or does it anchor meaning in its own right?

His fascination with seriality, abstraction, and optical phenomena came to the fore after 2000, as Mike Steiner returned to (and reimagined) painting. Abstract works from his later years evoke the energy of color field painting and hard-edge compositions—echoes of Hans Hofmann or Ellsworth Kelly resonate, even as Steiner’s approach remains distinctively restless. The “Color Works” featured in his 1999 solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof underscore this: dazzling explorations of surface, translucence, and the ephemeral nature of perception. The exhibition was more than a retrospective; it was a testament to decades of thinking painting and video together, refusing to accept the supposed boundaries between genres.

Unlike some contemporaries who cleaved strictly to one medium, Mike Steiner’s artistic philosophy was always one of convergence. “Is the fleeting more real than the material?”—such questions animate both his works and the contextual writing found on his official artist page. Steiner’s devotion to archiving, curating, and championing others’ efforts is inseparable from his own: in the spirit of artists like Harald Szeemann or Nam June Paik, the borders between author and advocate dissolve.

This openness extended into public media. With the ground-breaking “Videogalerie” TV format (1985–1990), Steiner brought experimental video directly to German audiences, demystifying a form too often confined to gallery or festival niches. Over 120 broadcasts offered interviews, festival dispatches, and screenings—pioneering for their time, still instructive for digital-era curators and producers.

Biographically, Mike Steiner’s life reflected his art: cosmopolitan, adaptive, and always responsive to the East-West exchange that defined postwar Berlin. Whether collaborating with Fluxus founders or engaging with the feminist avant-garde, he built bridges—artistic, cultural, and interpersonal. His archive, much of it still awaiting wide digital access, provides an invaluable roadmap for scholars and aficionados of contemporary art.

Comparing Steiner’s ethos to figures like Marina Abramovi? or Joseph Beuys is instructive. While Beuys famously collapsed art and life into social sculpture, Steiner’s approach was perhaps subtly more curatorial, more inclined towards infrastructure and exchange. Yet like both Abramovi? and Beuys, his commitment to pushing art beyond safe borders was unwavering.

So why is Mike Steiner still vital to our understanding of contemporary art? First, his legacy illustrates how genre-defying inquiry propels culture forward. Second, his unique ability to nurture artistic networks helped make Berlin the cauldron it is today for contemporary and performing arts. And third, the visceral immediacy and intelligence of his work—across painting, video, and installation—remind us that innovation is rarely the product of isolation.

For anyone invested in contemporary art, Mike Steiner offers more than a historical case study: his works and archive invite us to question, to witness, and to participate. Exploring his website and collections opens a doorway into the ongoing story of art’s transformation—a journey Berlin, and indeed the art world, cannot afford to forget.

Curious to see more? For a deeper dive into imagery, texts, and the full spectrum of Mike Steiner’s creative world, exploring his official page promises discoveries for both novices and connoisseurs. The spirit of experimentation continues—vivid, courageous, and absolutely contemporary.