Mike Steiner and the Evolution of Contemporary Art: From Berlin to the World

To immerse oneself in the world of Mike Steiner is to be confronted with the sheer plurality and audacity that contemporary art can embody. If Steiner’s restless spirit asked the question: how can painting and video, performance and installation, push against their own boundaries, then his life's work is the answer—bold, interdisciplinary, and unwaveringly avant-garde. From formative abstraction to concept-driven video, from Berlin’s underground to the luminous halls of Hamburger Bahnhof, Mike Steiner became a crucial figure for anyone seeking to understand the pulse of contemporary art in Germany and beyond. What defines an oeuvre that seems to always escape easy categorisation? And why is Steiner's contribution still urgent for artists and audiences today?

Explore contemporary masterpieces by Mike Steiner here – discover, reflect, experience contemporary art up close

Mike Steiner’s artistic journey cannot be told without Berlin, the city whose creative ferment fuelled his early experiments. Born in 1941 in Allenstein and raised in West-Berlin, Steiner’s education at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin provided an initial platform for his talent in painting. His debut on the public stage was precocious—at just 17, his still life with jug was exhibited at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, hinting at a future marked by ceaseless innovation. Where others settled into stylistic comfort, Steiner remained a seeker, adapting his language as the tides of art shifted from Informel and Pop Art to the radical dematerialization of the 1970s.

The 1960s brought Steiner into contact with the epicenters of artistic change. With support from the Ford Foundation, he traveled to the United States, landing in New York—a nexus for Fluxus, Pop Art, and the nascent performance scene. There, he counted among his acquaintances luminaries like Lil Picard, Robert Motherwell, Allan Kaprow, and Al Hansen. Exposure to the likes of Andy Warhol and Michael Snow deepened his fascination with avant-garde film, while his growing doubts about painting as an exclusive vehicle for expression would soon propel him into uncharted territory.

Returning to Berlin in the late 1960s, Mike Steiner was poised to become not just a painter, but a connector and catalyst. The legendary Hotel Steiner—his answer to the Chelsea Hotel—quickly became a Berlin hub for artists, thinkers, and rebels. It was more than a place of residence; it hosted an ongoing conversation about art, politics, and possibility. When the Studiogalerie opened in 1974, inspired by Florence’s Art/Tapes/22, Steiner provided not just walls but tools, making expensive video equipment available to artists eager to experiment. Here, the boundary between curator, producer, and creator dissolved—a signature trait of Mike Steiner’s approach to artmaking.

It is in videography and performance that Steiner’s name shines with particular clarity. As a proactive chronicler of the ephemeral, he became the trusted documentarian of actions that would define 1970s performance art: accompanying Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Marina Abramovi? (notably ‘Freeing the Body’), and Ulay, Steiner’s camera offered both testimony and interpretation. The notorious 1976 ‘kriminelle Berührung’ with Ulay—removing a Spitzweg painting from the Neue Nationalgalerie and placing it in a Kreuzberg home—was both performance and critique, deftly navigating themes of ownership, migration, and institutional power. The resulting film, screened at the Berlin Film Festival, became a critical document in video art history.

Yet Steiner was never content to simply chronicle; he curated, collected, and even invented new spaces for encountering art. As producer and moderator of the ‘Videogalerie’ on West Berlin cable television (1985–1990), he developed over 120 programs dedicated to video art—an unprecedented project, as boundary-breaking as Gerry Schum’s earlier Fernsehgalerie. The Berlin Video collection, later integrated into the Hamburger Bahnhof’s archives, remains an invaluable resource for scholars and fans of performance and video art worldwide, encompassing works by Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Emmett Williams, and others. Steiner’s collection was a living archive, echoing the fluxus ethos of making the fleeting permanent and accessible.

Among the most significant recognitions of Mike Steiner’s legacy stands the monumental solo exhibition ‘Color Works’ at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in 1999. This retrospective did not simply celebrate past triumphs but examined Steiner’s persistent refusal to compartmentalize painting, video, photography, and installation. Curated by the Nationalgalerie of Contemporary Arts Berlin, it highlighted how his color abstractions—later period paintings—continued a dialogue with his earlier tape experiments. The exhibition also marked the transfer of Steiner’s video art collection to the public domain, solidifying his status as both a contemporary artist and an essential chronicler of art’s evolving language.

Throughout his career, Steiner worked alongside, often in comparison and conversation with, other giants of the field—be it Joseph Beuys, whose criticality paralleled Steiner’s own; Marina Abramovi?, whose pioneering body art intersected with Steiner’s video lens; or Nam June Paik, the godfather of video art whose electronic poetics find kinship with Steiner’s multimedia explorations. In the landscape of German and international art, Steiner’s name belongs beside these icons—not in mimicry, but in bold, restless dialogue.

After a stroke in 2006, Mike Steiner withdrew from public life but continued painting, shifting toward abstract canvases and textile works in the solitude of his Berlin studio. Up until his passing in 2012, he remained, first and foremost, an experimenter—never content to repeat, never willing to abandon the possibility of the new. His late works, as much as his early actions, stand as testament to a ceaseless quest for expression.

Fascinating in Steiner’s case is not simply the diversity of his practice, but his ability to recognize what contemporary art could become: a territory in which genres meet, documentation becomes creation, and the artist is both actor and archivist. For today’s art lovers and practitioners, engaging with Steiner’s legacy—whether encountering a subtle abstract painting or watching grainy video documentation of a lost performance—remains an invitation to think beyond categories and to value artistic risk as a cultural necessity.

Why then does Steiner’s work remain so resonant? Perhaps because he was never content with the status quo, always testing the edges of media and meaning. His art is not a closed chapter, but a living provocation—one that continues to inspire, bewilder, and invite discovery in the context of contemporary arts, both in Berlin and globally.

For deeper insight and exclusive access to his archive, exhibitions, and evolving legacy, the official website at www.mike-steiner.de – Explore Mike Steiner's art, biography, and exhibition legacy here is indispensable. Delve in, reflect, and meet the moving borderlines of contemporary art.

@ ad-hoc-news.de

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