Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer and the Fluxus Legacy in Berlin

What happens when an artist blurs the lines between the painterly gesture and the moving image, re-inventing the boundaries of contemporary art? Mike Steiner, a name deeply etched in the artistic landscape of Berlin, answered this question time and again with a restless, cross-disciplinary spirit. His art, spanning from abstract paintings to groundbreaking video works, pulses with an urge for experimentation and a profound connection to the performing arts.

Discover contemporary art by Mike Steiner – view key works and highlights online

From the outset, Mike Steiner was never simply satisfied with the canvas. His early recognition as a painter in postwar Berlin quickly evolved into a more expansive vision: art as archive, as event, as lived experience. Beyond his own paintings—often exploring abstraction, color, and formal invention—Steiner set out to break conventions by founding Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie, unique spaces which buzzed with artistic dialogue and international exchange. These venues became essential nodes in the network that fostered Fluxus, Performance Art, and later, the flowering of contemporary arts in Berlin.

The shift from painting to video marked a crucial turning point in Mike Steiner's artistic development. By the 1970s, he reacted to what he called a "crisis of legitimation" for painting, reflecting a wider dissatisfaction among his avant-garde peers. Inspired by his exposure to the New York scene—conversations with Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, and the likes of Robert Motherwell—Steiner brought a New World sense of innovation back to Berlin. He became one of Germany’s very first champions of video art, both as an artist and a tireless collector.

His “Painted Tapes” series exemplifies this boundary-defying attitude. Here, video and painting merge, each amplifying the other to create a new kind of visual syntax. In works such as "Mojave Plan" or "Penumbras 3," the digital and the painterly compete and intertwine—an echo, perhaps, of Gerhard Richter’s oscillation between abstraction and photorealism or of Nam June Paik’s pioneering video installations. Steiner’s legacy belongs alongside these heavyweights: He was as interested in the new technical possibilities of electronic images as in their power to evoke emotion and experience.

No portrait of Mike Steiner can omit his role as an integrator of the international avant-garde. The Studiogalerie, founded in 1974, was more than an exhibition space; it was an incubator for performing arts, happening, Fluxus, and other experimental forms. Valie Export, Marina Abramovi?, Jochen Gerz, Ulay—the list of artists who found a platform here reads like a who’s who of global performance art. Their most ephemeral actions were often preserved by Steiner himself, camera in hand, ensuring these fleeting moments could enter the growing archive of contemporary arts in Berlin.

A landmark in Steiner’s biography came with the notorious performance “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst” (1976), orchestrated together with Ulay: a staged removal of the iconic Spitzweg painting “Der arme Poet” from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, the action documented and fiercely debated. Far from a mere provocation, this intervention raised enduring questions about the boundaries between art and law, presence and absence—resonant themes in contemporary art that artists like Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow were also exploring.

In the following years, Steiner’s commitment to art as a social and media experiment only intensified. Through his television format, the “Videogalerie” (1985–1990), he produced and moderated over 120 programs for German TV, offering viewers unprecedented access to the developing field of video art. This pioneering effort echoed the earlier Fernsehgalerie of Gerry Schum, but within the context of a new digital era. It was initiatives like these that secured Berlin’s reputation as an experimental capital of the contemporary arts in the late 20th century.

The sheer versatility of Mike Steiner’s oeuvre cannot be underestimated. Beyond painting and video, he immersed himself in Super-8 film, photography, Copy Art, installations, and even fabric works towards the end of his life. Such multidisciplinary curiosity set him apart from contemporaries who remained wedded to single mediums. Like Bill Viola, Richard Serra, or even Gerhard Richter, Steiner understood that each medium carries its own logic and impact, capable of shaping how we perceive time, space, and the boundaries of art itself.

One of Steiner’s most significant milestones was his large-scale solo show at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in 1999, which celebrated his color-intensive works and his role as a cross-genre innovator. Today, his extensive video collection—endowed to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz—remains a crucial resource, now housed at the Hamburger Bahnhof. These archives, brimming with early recordings of Ulay, Abramovi?, Serra, and many others, capture the pulse of experimental art in a way few other collections do.

Biographically, Mike Steiner’s story is also that of postwar Europe and postmodern Berlin. Born in 1941 in East Prussia, he grew up amidst the shifting frontiers of a divided continent. Studying under Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn in Berlin, he emerged early in the 1960s—alongside the likes of Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke—before expanding his horizons with extended stays in New York. Returning to Berlin, he poured his creative energies into the city’s cultural renaissance, standing at the intersection of German abstraction, Pop Art, and international performance.

Fascinatingly, Steiner was also one of the first German art professionals to see the importance of archiving, collecting, and mediating contemporary practices—not merely for posterity, but as an active participant in living culture. His archives form not just a personal legacy, but a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the dynamic world and history of contemporary arts in Berlin.

Why, then, should Mike Steiner matter now? Precisely because his work embodies the spirit of experiment and openness that contemporary art still strives for today. The questions he raised—about medium, about authorship, about the social role of the artist—are as alive in Berlin’s art spaces and the world’s biennials as ever. While much of Steiner’s video archive has yet to be fully digitized, today’s viewers can glimpse his range: abstract paintings alive with color, meditative photo cycles, and electronic visions that feel prescient even decades on.

For those eager to encounter the legacy and the pulse of Berlin’s contemporary art, Steiner’s oeuvre offers a living bridge between painting, video, and performance. The artist invites us to see, to question, and most of all to participate—on the canvas, in the gallery, and in the archive.

For deeper insights into the life, archive, and legacy of Mike Steiner—including a detailed biography, exhibition records, and digital images—please visit Mike Steiner – official artist page.

@ ad-hoc-news.de

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