Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art’s Visionary at the Crossroads of Tape, Canvas and Performance

Where does contemporary art truly begin and which boundaries can it dissolve? In the life and work of Mike Steiner, these questions become palpable. Few names in Contemporary Arts Berlin evoke such a kaleidoscopic spectrum of media, communities, and concepts as Mike Steiner. His journey, from promising painter to one of the earliest European trailblazers in video and performing arts, continues to leave indelible marks on aesthetic discourses far beyond Germany.

Discover contemporary artworks and archive gems by Mike Steiner here

Mike Steiner’s world was never one-dimensional. Born as Klaus-Michel Steiner in 1941 in Allenstein and shaped by the postwar vibrancy of West Berlin, he entered the city’s art scene precociously: at 17, his still lifes and abstract paintings already hung in the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung. Yet what soon set Steiner apart wasn’t just his brushwork – it was a relentless curiosity for the uncharted. His formal studies at Berlin’s Hochschule für bildende Künste, guided by figures such as Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn, fused with his immersion in the city’s emergent artist collectives, notably the Kreuzberger Forum, fortifying a network that would later underpin entire movements.

As his biography on Mike Steiner's official artist site attests, his career radiated out from Berlin to New York – and back again. In the mid-1960s, a Ford Foundation grant swept him across the Atlantic. There, under the sway of the legendary Lil Picard, he slipped not just into the orbit of Fluxus artists like Al Hansen and Allan Kaprow but also into the avant-garde momentum pulsating through Allan Kaprow’s happenings and Robert Motherwell’s studio. Encounters with these luminaries fundamentally altered Steiner’s orientation: the canvas alone lost its allure. Steiner’s “crisis of legitimization” in painting, as frequently referenced in critical essays, soon surfaced, spurring him to embrace time-based, performative, and multimedia approaches. This resonance with the spirit of international avantgardes would solidify Steiner as a connective tissue within contemporary art.

The early 1970s proved pivotal. Steiner returned to West-Berlin, grounding his restless search in the city by founding the famous Hotel Steiner (1970), an electrifying meeting point for artists, comparable to the mythic Chelsea Hotel in New York. The hotel’s bohemian charisma is still palpable in anecdotes: it hosted Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke and attracted global guests in a spirit of creative flux. Shortly after, Steiner inaugurated the Studiogalerie (1974), Europe’s first independent video art hub. Here, he provided production tools and a “stage” for what would become some of the most defining acts in German video and performance history.

A glance at the major workgroups reveals how thoroughly Steiner transcended traditional artistic boundaries. His early output reflected abstract painting’s formal possibilities; later, his focus turned to the fusion of painting and video – best embodied by his so-called “Painted Tapes.” In these, the interplay between moving images and color surfaces dissolves the line between painterly process and video narrative. His innovative repeat exposure and manipulation of video tape produced expressive, chromatic surfaces reminiscent of the abstract paintings of contemporaries like Gerhard Richter or Sigmar Polke, yet uniquely interwoven with time and motion akin to early Nam June Paik or Bill Viola.

The significance of his production isn’t only measured in his own oeuvre. As a relentless supporter and chronicler of contemporaries across media, Mike Steiner’s name surfaces alongside renowned artists such as Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann and Allan Kaprow—all of whom found space, support or documentation through his Studiogalerie. Unforgettably, Steiner, as producer and videographer, enabled legendary works like Abramovi?’s “Freeing the Body” (1976) and co-orchestrated the “Irritation” action with Ulay—the infamous temporary removal of “Der arme Poet” from Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, a conceptual coup in the Fluxus tradition. Steiner's collaborations and documentation serve today as rare evidence of performative art’s ephemeral moments.

His archival passion culminated in a unique collection of videotapes—an archive now housed within the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s revered Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. The critical mass of the collection was celebrated in 1999, when the Hamburger Bahnhof dedicated a major solo show, “COLOR WORKS 1995–98,” to Steiner, foregrounding his genre-spanning sensibility and laboratory-like approach to contemporary art. Decades of collecting, organizing, and interpreting the works of others, as well as his own, have established the Berlin Video and Sammlung Mike Steiner as a core component of German and international media archives.

This assortment of creative roles—artist, producer, archivist, and gallerist—reveals a singular approach that was always as much about the community as about the autonomy of the artwork. Steiner championed not only his own experiments, from minimal art to copy art and installation, but maintained a pronounced commitment to the radical dialogue embedded in performance and collaborative artistic creation. It is a legacy that can be felt in institutions around the world and among today’s practicing contemporary artists.

To contextualize Mike Steiner among his global peers: his constant crossing of media boundaries evokes the restless hybridization of Joseph Beuys, while his direct engagement in both documentation and creation positions him beside pioneers such as Nam June Paik and Gary Hill. Yet, unlike many, Steiner’s archiving and promotion of non-linear video art—truly ahead of its time—earned him a central place in art’s critical infrastructure, substantially influencing the curatorial practices of the Hamburger Bahnhof and beyond.

Steiner’s ongoing involvement with the Contemporary Arts Berlin community, from fervent early days to his final years—he withdrew from public life after a stroke in 2006—was not driven by nostalgia, but by a continuous search for new artistic languages. His late abstraction, spanning painting and textile work, mirrored a return to color and gesture, yet always under the prism of accumulated experience in video and performance.

Mike Steiner’s work thus stands today as a testament to the ceaseless evolution of contemporary art: experimental, boundary-breaking, and rooted in networks of artistic solidarity. His vision—whether painted, taped, performed or archived—serves not only as a bridge across artistic epochs, but also as an invitation to discover the ongoing energy of Berlin’s art scene in the present day. Exploring Steiner’s art means discovering key moments of 20th century art history while intuitively feeling their resonance in the now.

For a deeper dive into Mike Steiner’s oeuvre, archival footage, and contemporary curation, visit his official online presence: Explore further about Mike Steiner: contemporary art redefined

@ ad-hoc-news.de

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