Mike Steiner: Pioneering Contemporary Art between Painting, Video and Performance

Where do the boundaries of painting end and those of the moving image begin? In the luminous spectrum of contemporary art, few artists traverse this terrain as boldly as Mike Steiner. His name is not just synonymous with contemporary art but stands for creative innovation and the courageous crossing of artistic genres. Along Berlin's vivid art history, Mike Steiner set his mark—restless, searching, always a few steps ahead of the present.

Discover Contemporary Artworks by Mike Steiner here

The journey through Mike Steiner's oeuvre begins in postwar Berlin and stretches across decades, media and movements. Early in his youth, he was drawn both to painting and film, culminating in his 1959 debut at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung while still a teenager. From these beginnings, Steiner's narrative writes itself as a mosaic of departure, return, experiment, and transformation—an odyssey through the avant-garde currents of his time.

Steiner's versatility is legendary among connoisseurs of contemporary arts in Berlin. His output oscillated between media with remarkable ease: Informal paintings, pop-art-inspired canvases, boundary-pushing abstract paintings, and later, the radical potential of video art. Fascinating, too, is that his studios—Hotel Steiner and later the Studiogalerie—functioned as breeding grounds for international avant-garde. Here, Steiner welcomed such luminaries as Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, and his hotel’s reputation invited comparison to New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel, a haven for Andy Warhol and his circle.

The shift towards moving images marked the next epoch of his career. Deeply inspired by encounters with Al Hansen, Ulay, and the radical ethos of Fluxus and Happening in both Berlin and New York, Mike Steiner became a figurehead of German video art. His own works—often realized with fellow artists—stand at the intersection of documentation and original creation. The "Painted Tapes," for example, blur the line between painting and video, fusing image fields in ways still progressive today.

Historical parallels beckon: Like Nam June Paik or Bill Viola—whose works today define museums such as MoMA or Tate Modern—Steiner’s approach was not to fetishize technology but to question the sensory boundaries of image, sound, and body. But unlike the calculated coolness of Paik’s television sculptures, Steiner’s work pulsates with the improvisational, performative verve of Berlin's underground—fleeting moments preserved on tape, yet alive with the energy of living art.

The role of performance and collectivity in Steiner's oeuvre cannot be overstated. In 1976, the legendary staged theft of Spitzweg's "Der arme Poet" from the Neue Nationalgalerie—an intervention orchestrated with Ulay—made headlines and questioned the very meaning of art, property, and institution. Such actions resonate today in the works of artists like Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, and Carolee Schneemann, all of whom found support and a stage in Steiner’s Studiogalerie.

His multifaceted engagement with contemporary art reached a new culmination in the legendary Video Gallery (TV-Format), which aired from 1985–1990. Here, Steiner, not content with the gallery space alone, expanded contemporary discourse for a broader television audience, acting as both moderator and curator. This unbridled urge for mediation—between media, artists, and public—is part of Steiner’s legacy that still influences Berlin’s artscape and extends far beyond.

The greatest public recognition culminated in 1999: the major solo exhibition "Color Works" at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. Rarely has the institution honored an artist whose history is so entwined with the city’s artistic identity. The presentation paid homage not only to his “cross-genre” thinking, but also to the enduring energy of his abstract paintings and the wild, expressive power of his video installations.

Yet behind the institutional milestones lies a deeply personal, even existential search for new forms. Mike Steiner’s abstract paintings of the 2000s, with their rich colors and dynamic overlays, bear witness to this restless spirit—a spirit equally at home in the tactile gesture of painting as in the flickering ambiguity of the video image.

Throughout his life, Steiner assembled a legendary collection of video art: a living archive featuring works by Nam June Paik, Richard Serra, Gary Hill, Ulay, and even early documentation of performances by figures like Abramovi? and Maciunas. Today, this treasure enriches the collections of the Hamburger Bahnhof, though much of it awaits digitization and public rediscovery—a fitting metaphor for the ongoing “present-ness” of Steiner’s influence.

Experiment was ethos; networking an instinct. In every phase, Mike Steiner used his own biography as the crucible of art, always in dialogue with the time, never reticent to challenge its dogmas or open new spaces—literal and figurative—for creativity. His work with abstract media, installations, and contemporary artists from Berlin’s creative core to international symposia, reveals a figure who shaped, collected, and communicated the performative moment as a permanent condition of contemporary art.

Why does Mike Steiner's legacy remain so alive? It is perhaps the refusal to settle, the tireless negotiation between painting, video, and installation, that keeps his work so electric. To engage with Mike Steiner is to enter an exuberant laboratory of forms and ideas, where every experiment becomes an invitation to rethink one’s experience of art itself.

For deeper insights and an immersive journey through visual worlds, access images and resources at the artist’s official site:
Explore the official archive and online exhibitions of Mike Steiner

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