Mike Steiner: The Visionary Who Changed Contemporary Art Through Video and Abstraction

To speak of Mike Steiner is to delve into the restless pulse of contemporary art’s transformation in the second half of the 20th century. His work stands for a courage to cross boundaries––between painting and video, creation and curation, presence and documentation. But how do you define an artist who never settled for one medium, and constantly redefined the rules of what art could be?

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Steiner’s art radiates an energy that is both experimental and deeply rooted in artistic discourse. Early on, while still a teenager, Steiner made his mark on Berlin’s art scene, presenting a still life at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition of 1959. From the start, his curiosity for the intersection of image and reality led him across continents and movements: From painting as a young man in Kreuzberg to immersion in the New York scene, where encounters with Fluxus giants like Allan Kaprow and Lil Picard shaped his thinking.

What makes Mike Steiner unique in the canon of contemporary arts in Berlin is the fluidity of his journey. Whereas many artists become specialists, Steiner became a bridge. Inspired by New York’s experimental circles and an evolving skepticism toward the limits of painting, he shifted his focus in the early 1970s to video art—a daring and unconventional choice in Germany at the time. With him, Berlin became a nerve center for video and performing arts, thanks especially to his founding of the legendary Hotel Steiner and, later, the Studiogalerie. These places didn’t just show art—they lived it, housing overnight guests like Joseph Beuys, inspiring spontaneous Fluxus happenings, and providing creative shelter to names such as Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, and Ulay.

Steiner’s practice was as diverse as it was fearless. He moved easily between abstract paintings, Super 8 film, copy art, and the tactile experiments of 'Painted Tapes,' which merged video with painterly gesture. His technical innovation lay in always seeing beyond the canvas: by treating the television screen as both surface and stage, he anticipated the shift from analog to digital art. This boundary-blurring recalls international contemporaries like Nam June Paik, with whom he shared common ground, or Marina Abramovi?, whose iconic performances he helped document and preserve. Unlike Paik, Steiner always insisted on the interconnectedness of Berlin’s artistic community—a decentralisation of creativity, not just a new medium.

Perhaps no event symbolizes Mike Steiner’s impact more than his epic 1999 solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. Titled "COLOR WORKS," this exhibition showcased not only his prowess as a painter, but also his exhibition-making acumen and archive-building zeal—a unique legacy within contemporary art. His extensive collection of video art, featuring works by Ulay, Bill Viola, and Richard Serra, now forms one of the genre’s key repositories, largely housed at Hamburger Bahnhof. Selected works, such as the infamous 1976 action ‘Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst’ (with Ulay), interweave live performance with sober documentation, drawing sharp attention to the constructed and fragile realities within art institutions.

The narrative of Mike Steiner's life reveals much about the evolution of contemporary art. Born in East Prussia in 1941, fleeing the turbulence of war, and growing up in postwar West Berlin, he began his artistic studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under teachers like Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn. Steiner’s time in New York was pivotal—not just for his painting, but for his outlook: through colleagues like Al Hansen and the intellectual communities of Fluxus and Pop Art, he discovered the liberating power of process art and intermedia exchange. Upon returning to Berlin, he founded the Hotel Steiner in the heart of the city, which quickly became a hub echoing the spirit of New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel.

Throughout the 1970s, his Studiogalerie at Ludwigkirchstraße 10 became ground zero for emerging multimedia and performance practices in Berlin. This meant offering Berlin’s scene, often overshadowed by Cologne’s, a forum not just for video, but for the radical performances of the period’s most innovative artists. His own work from this period veers from poetic video studies to pieces capturing the fevered energy of international performance art—often acting as both artist and documentarian.

Crucially, Mike Steiner’s significance for contemporary art also lies in his attitude toward collecting and archiving. From his acquisition of Reiner Ruthenbeck’s early video object to assembling one of the most comprehensive video art archives in Germany, his role as collector and promoter was inseparable from his identity as an artist. The ‘Berlin Video’ program he devised in 1991 for ‘Interferenzen: Kunst aus Westberlin’ revealed an ear finely tuned to the city’s cultural memory, as well as an international outlook evidenced by guest lectures and documentaries filmed from Egypt to Australia.

Mike Steiner’s work, as seen in later decades, becomes more abstract, moving deeper into color, gesture, and meditative qualities that reflect both an internal and external search. His final years, spent at his Berlin studio after a stroke, were devoted to painting and textile work—an introspective coda to a life otherwise marked by exuberant exchange and outward curiosity.

What remains, ultimately, is a legacy that reaches far beyond the surface of his paintings or the glow of his videos. Mike Steiner was an architect of possibility, enabling collaboration, debate, and experimentation in an era when the boundaries of art and the city were both in flux. His influence can be felt in the performing arts that draw from his documented efforts, the Berlin galleries that thrive on a legacy of DIY energy, and the global perception of German contemporary art as vibrant, open, and ever restless.

For anyone seeking to understand the DNA of Contemporary Arts Berlin––or who simply wishes to experience the electrifying dialogue between image, action, and idea––the art of Mike Steiner is essential fare.

Visit Mike Steiner’s official website for more exhibitions, images, and in-depth information

His relentless drive to merge genres, support innovation, and challenge conventions makes Mike Steiner a touchstone for anyone passionate about contemporary art’s continuous evolution.