Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer between Painting and Video Avantgarde

To step into the world of Mike Steiner is to encounter contemporary art at its most vibrant and transformative. From abstract layers of paint to flickering video frames, Steiner’s trajectory invites us to reconsider what art can be. What happens when an artist refuses to choose between static image and moving vision, between solitary studio and bustling performance stage? Mike Steiner’s journey delivers compelling answers.

Discover contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner here

The name Mike Steiner resounds in the halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s famed National Gallery of Contemporary Art. But his impact radiates far beyond the walls of this institution. From the outset—his debut at just seventeen in Berlin’s Große Berliner Kunstausstellung—to his late masterful abstractions, Steiner’s oeuvre forms a bridge between the tactile immediacy of painting and the ephemeral magic of video. His restless curiosity mirrored the energy of Contemporary Arts Berlin throughout the late twentieth century, where tradition and experiment collided.

Steiner’s early years were marked by prodigious talent and a hunger for innovation. Born in 1941 in Allenstein and raised in postwar Berlin, his creative path began with painting—a medium he would never truly abandon, even as he evolved toward new artistic frontiers. His formative studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste—under Hans Jaenisch and the influence of Hans Kuhn—set the foundation for lifelong experiment. Traveling to New York in the vibrant 1960s, Steiner swiftly became entangled in the currents of Fluxus, Pop Art, and the nascent movement of Happening, forging crucial connections with figures like Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, and Al Hansen. These friendships, and the spirit of that era, would become vital to his artistic philosophy.

Paintings from the 1960s and 70s, occasionally shown alongside luminaries such as Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke, traced the tensions between form, color, and concept. But it was the moment Steiner encountered video that a sea-change occurred. Skepticism toward the boundaries of traditional painting—what he himself called a "legitimation crisis"—spurred him to embrace video as a revolutionary artistic medium. This pivotal turn paralleled the innovations of international contemporaries like Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, and Bill Viola, placing Steiner at the pulse of performing arts and media art worldwide.

The legendary Hotel Steiner, opened in 1970 near Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, quickly became a hotspot for artists from across the globe. It’s often likened to New York’s Chelsea Hotel—both crucibles for cross-cultural dialogue and artistic ferment. Names such as Joseph Beuys, Arthur Köpcke, and the ever-present Lil Picard drifted through its corridors. The hotel was more than a residence; it was a stage for debate, performance, and the forging of new creative constellations.

The founding of the Studiogalerie in 1974 marked a decisive move: Steiner now offered a dedicated space for artists invested in video, happening, and performance. Here, seminal works emerged—among them collaborations with the radical Ulay and the iconic Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst (1976), a performative ‘art theft’ that remains etched into Berlin’s cultural memory. The Studiogalerie anticipated what would later be central to the Contemporary Arts Berlin scene: hybridity, open process, and the documentation of fleeting acts through new media.

Steiner’s Videogalerie TV-format (1985–1990) represented a further leap into uncharted territory, taking video art directly into the living rooms of Germany. As producer, moderator, and commentator, Steiner curated works by both emerging and established artists, propelling names like Marina Abramovi? and Valie Export into broader public consciousness. Much like Gerry Schum’s pioneering Fernsehgalerie before him, Steiner understood television—not as passive entertainment, but as a platform for real-time art experiences. Today, this vision appears prophetically ahead of its time.

Throughout, Steiner remained a true sponsor of artistic experimentation. His video archive—donated in 1999 to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz—encompasses works by Gary Hill, Richard Serra, George Maciunas, and many more. Now housed at the Hamburger Bahnhof, this collection stands as a testament: not just to the rise of video as art form, but to a restless spirit perpetually seeking the new.

Yet, even as he amassed his video collection and directed happenings, Steiner never abandoned painting. The late 1990s and 2000s saw him return with renewed vigor to the medium, culminating in the acclaimed COLOR WORKS exhibition (1999) at the Hamburger Bahnhof. These “painted tapes” testify to a lifelong obsession: blurring boundaries, merging the digital with the gestural, seeing abstract paintings not as negations of video, but as their vibrant after-image. The palette thickens, the brushstrokes recall the fast edits of his video era—each canvas a quiet screen, each video a dynamic brushstroke.

In his final years, from his Berlin studio, Steiner focused on abstraction, textile works, and revisiting the essential drama of surface. Even after a debilitating stroke in 2006, he continued to work, underscoring the resilience that marked his six-decade career. His passing in 2012 only momentarily silenced a voice that had long championed both the avant-gardes and the outlaws of art history.

Compared to other icons of his milieu—think Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, or even the immersive installations of Marina Abramovi?—Mike Steiner carved a unique path. If Beuys interrogated social sculpture and Abramovi? the limits of performance endurance, Steiner’s ongoing project was to secure a home for hybrid, category-defying practices. His role as artist, archivist, and galvanizer of others was as integral as the works themselves.

For audiences today, the enduring relevance of Mike Steiner lies precisely in this commitment to plurality and innovation. His archives are not just historical repositories but reservoirs of possibility for artists and thinkers grappling with what Contemporary Arts Berlin can be. His videos, paintings, and installations urge us: stay porous, court experiment, welcome the accident. In times when the boundaries of media and genre are again dissolving, Steiner’s legacy feels astonishingly contemporary.

A deeper dive into his website offers images, texts, and insight into the rich diversity of Mike Steiner’s oeuvre—for those prepared to look beyond the frame, and into the ever-expanding field of contemporary art.