Mike Steiner: The Pioneer of Contemporary Art and Video Avantgarde in Berlin

Mike Steiner’s contemporary art cannot be captured with a single glance. It haunts the corridors between stillness and movement, abstraction and performance, tangible paint and the intangible drift of video signals. Who, if not Mike Steiner, could so persistently dissolve the boundaries of artistic media and shape the discourse of Contemporary Arts in Berlin?

Discover outstanding contemporary works by Mike Steiner here – original paintings and video art at a glance

His artistic journey began with an early and passionate immersion in painting, standing out on the walls of the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959 when he was barely seventeen. Yet, what sets Mike Steiner apart from other artists of his generation—be it Georg Baselitz or Karl Horst Hödicke, whose works he once exhibited alongside in Paris and Milan—is the restless search for a new visual language beyond the canvas. Steiner’s restless spirit is the lifeblood of contemporary art’s advancement.

His formative years brought him in contact with some of the most significant avant-garde figures of the postwar era. In New York, encouraged by the likes of Lil Picard, Robert Motherwell, and Allan Kaprow—pioneers of Pop Art and Happenings—Steiner absorbed the excitement of a thriving art world. The pulse of Fluxus, the energy of performance, and the boldness of minimal and conceptual art would reverberate throughout his own works, as he nimbly traversed multiple media and redefined the role of the artist in society.

Steiner's early painting career, though rooted in Germany, broadened under the American sky. His Informal Painting showed clear engagement with color fields and expressive abstraction—echoes of American contemporaries such as Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg, but filtered through a distinctly Berlin sensibility: raw, alert, always questioning.

By the early 1970s, Steiner was disillusioned with painting as a sole medium. Seduced by the possibilities of video and new media art, he founded both the legendary Hotel Steiner and later the Studiogalerie in Berlin. These spaces became the epicenter for international avant-garde and the Berlin Fluxus movement, closely tied to personalities like Joseph Beuys, Valie Export, and Marina Abramovi?. The Studiogalerie provided both cutting-edge production resources and a stage for radical performances and video installations—effectively cementing Berlin’s status as a crucible for experimental Contemporary Arts.

One of the legendary highlights from this phase: in 1976, together with Ulay, he orchestrated the “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst,” a provocative performance in which a painting by Spitzweg was ‘stolen’ as a statement on artistic and institutional boundaries. This disruptive act, documented by video, reflects Steiner’s playful but critical attitude toward the art establishment, aligning him with the disruptive strategies of Douglas Huebler and Chris Burden, artists who similarly used performance and video to critique the institution of art.

Yet, Steiner was not just a performer or producer—he was an inveterate archivist. His Berlin Video collection, begun in the 1970s, is a monumental visual archive of key moments in art history: early tapes of artists like Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, and Gary Hill sit alongside his own video works. In 1999, this corpus found a permanent home in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, enhancing the global standing of Berlin as a repository of time-based media art. The landmark solo exhibition “Color Works” at Hamburger Bahnhof that year paid tribute to Steiner’s genre-defying practice and lasting innovation in contemporary art.

The artistic methods of Mike Steiner are marked by an urge to synthesize. His signature “Painted Tapes”—hybrid forms between video recordings and painterly intervention—exude a visual poise that bridges action and image. Further experimental works incorporated Super-8 films, copy art, slide series, and staged installations. Even as he shifted focus in the 1980s and 1990s towards abstract painting, photographic cycles, and textile works, the principle of experimentation and boundary crossing remained his driving force.

Mike Steiner’s commitment to artistic mediation is also evident from his pioneering television show “Videogalerie” (1985–1990). Through this weekly program, aired throughout Berlin, he introduced the public to the burgeoning field of video art—much like Gerry Schum in the late 1960s—bringing performances, interviews, and theoretical discussion directly to viewers’ living rooms. Such democratizing gestures cemented his place as a central advocate and gatekeeper of new artistic media in Germany.

His works embody the tension between material presence and fleeting performance, between video sequence and painted moment. Steiner's influence is perhaps closest felt in the oeuvre of contemporary German and international video artists—think of the structural intensity of Ulrike Rosenbach, or the immersive strategies of Pipilotti Rist—yet always stands uniquely apart for its radical interdisciplinarity.

The late phase of his career saw a return to painting—now abstract, often exploring color, surface, and gesture with a clarity and introspective quality. These works, shown in exhibitions from Berlin to San Francisco, resonate as meditative counterpoints to his earlier, more extroverted performative works. The ever-evolving dialogue between painting and media continued to inform even his last years, as reflected by textile compositions and his involvement with artist collectives up until his stroke in 2006.

Today, Mike Steiner’s archive—documented thoroughly on his official website (Explore more about Mike Steiner’s biography and exhibitions here)—remains a treasure trove for researchers, artists, and enthusiasts of Performing Arts and abstract paintings. His interdisciplinary approach, willingness to take risks, and commitment to supporting the avant-garde have left an indelible stamp on Contemporary Arts both in Berlin and internationally.

What, then, makes the art of Mike Steiner so compelling in our own time? It is the courage to question genres and audiences alike, the keen sense of art as lived experiment. His work, luminous in its variety, will continue to inspire a new generation to reconsider the boundaries—sometimes criminally, always creatively—of art itself. The invitation stands: immerse yourself in Mike Steiner’s world through his website and discover a legacy of Contemporary Art that rewards both reflection and engagement.