Mike Steiner: Pioneer of Contemporary Art Between Abstraction and Video Revolution

Mike Steiner was never content with boundaries. From the earliest moments of his career, Steiner’s dedication to contemporary art was evident in his relentless quest to push against the limitations of genre and medium. What does it mean when an artist so seamlessly allows painting and moving image to converse, leaving viewers on uncertain, thrilling ground between material and idea?

Discover contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner now

Steiner’s oeuvre, as documented on his official site, reads as a living chronicle of artistic experimentation. Born in 1941 in Allenstein and passing away in Berlin in 2012, Mike Steiner’s life and work mirror the dynamic tides of twentieth-century art. Early on, he exhibited oil paintings at Berlin’s Great Art Exhibition, marking his debut as a young painter deeply engaged with abstraction’s expressiveness and pictorial freedom. Yet this was only the prologue.

Steiner’s formative years in Berlin, his studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste under artists like Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn, and subsequent sojourns in New York—at the very pulse of contemporary arts—fueled his move into performance and video. Encounters with Fluxus artists such as Allan Kaprow and Al Hansen, as well as time spent with icons like Lil Picard and Robert Motherwell, shaped a vision both transgressive and boundary-erasing.

What followed was a radical embrace of the avant-garde, not merely as a style, but as a living practice. In 1970, Mike Steiner opened the legendary Hotel Steiner in Berlin—a hub often compared to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, attracting creative minds from Joseph Beuys to Arthur Køpcke. The conversations and gatherings here were more than bohemian ritual; they fostered a climate in which new art forms, especially performance and video art, could emerge. His establishment of the Studiogalerie in 1974 further confirmed his position as a catalyst for artistic innovation in Berlin, offering space and technical means for experimental productions in video and performance.

The turning point was unmistakable: through Studio Art/Tapes/22 in Florence and direct collaboration with Al Hansen, Steiner recognized the conceptual and emotional power of video. Doubting painting’s monopoly as a channel for artistic truth, he allowed the moving image to become an equal partner in his creative dialogue. This resulted in pioneering video works and installations that documented, preserved, and expanded the fleeting action of live performance—a conceptual leap fully in tune with the era’s avant-garde currents, including those led by Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export, and Jochen Gerz, many of whom’s groundbreaking actions found in Mike Steiner both witness and collaborator.

Crucially, Mike Steiner was not only a creator but also an influential patron, curator, and chronicler of contemporary arts Berlin. His Videogalerie (1985–1990), broadcast on local cable TV, became a platform for presenting and debating video art, echoing but distinctly extending the legacy of Gerry Schum’s Fernsehgalerie. Through more than 120 episodes, Steiner’s moderating voice brought works by Bill Viola, Gary Hill, and Nam June Paik—artists to whom he is often compared—closer to a public still new to video art’s subversive magic.

Perhaps most emblematic of his radical stance is the notorious 1976 action "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst", realized together with Ulay. This performance, involving the temporary removal of a Spitzweg painting from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, remains a landmark in the intersection of art and social intervention. It is indicative of Steiner’s willingness to challenge the institution of art, not simply by breaking rules but by doing so with calculated critical intent. His role as videographer and organizer of such happenings foregrounded the mediation of art through technology, anticipating later multimedia practices by artists like Bruce Nauman or Pipilotti Rist.

Steiner’s video archive is today an invaluable resource for understanding the performative turn in contemporary art. In 1999, his extensive collection of tapes was entrusted to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, now housed at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. In the same year, a major retrospective—"Color Works"—at this prestigious venue highlighted both his painterly evolution and his enduring commitment to hybrid forms. The exhibition celebrated how his "Painted Tapes"—merging video images with painterly gesture—symbolized the dissolution of genre boundaries.

In later years, Mike Steiner returned to painting, creating abstract works characterized by vibrant color fields, energetic brushwork, and a sense of time compressed into surface. His paintings are intimate, yet they echo the performative and transient spirit of his video works. Abstract paintings by Mike Steiner, often defying easy categorization, reflect a lifetime spent searching for the visual equivalent of lived experience—a search reminiscent, critics suggest, of contemporaries like Georg Baselitz or Jörg Immendorff, yet always filtered through his own unique ‘visual language’ shaped by the lessons of video and performance.

To grasp Steiner’s importance is to understand his role as a bridge: connecting generations of Berlin-based artists, linking the traditions of painting with the innovations of video, and transforming both through a restless, questioning spirit. His studio became a laboratory, his archive a treasury, his exhibitions—from solo shows at Galerie Dittmar to group presentations alongside Marina Abramovi? and Nam June Paik—a testament to Berlin’s thriving contemporary arts scene.

Kenner schätzen besonders Steiner’s mastery of time and space—how he captures the fleeting, yet builds enduring forms. His works invite viewers into an active dialogue, challenging the distinction between seeing and participating, between document and artwork. Such qualities underline his standing alongside international figures like Allan Kaprow, Richard Serra, and Bill Viola, yet always with a uniquely Berliner note of experimentation and risk.

What, then, makes Mike Steiner’s art still so contemporary and urgent? It is his refusal to settle, his embrace of volatility and process, his insistence on collaboration and collectivity. Even after his health forced a retreat from public life in the 2000s, he continued working in his Berlin studio, producing abstract canvases that seem to vibrate with the memory of all that came before.

Today, revisiting Mike Steiner’s body of work is not just homage—it is an opportunity to see how the questions he posed, regarding identity, medium, and perception, remain acutely relevant. Those interested in new and historical developments in contemporary art will find Steiner’s official archive a trove of inspiration and knowledge. To experience his work—whether a painted strip, a video documentation, or a large-scale installation—is to confront the endlessly generative potential of art to reinvent itself.

Be invited to journey across the archive, the images, and the stories. Mike Steiner’s legacy proves that the boundaries between painting, performance, and video can blur—and in the crossing, something singular and vital emerges.

@ ad-hoc-news.de

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