Mike Steiner and Contemporary Art: A Visionary Between Painting and Video at Hamburger Bahnhof

Mike Steiner’s impact on contemporary art is felt most profoundly in the fluidity with which he moved across genres, always questioning, always dissolving boundaries. What remains of painting in the age of video? How can a single artist swing between vivid abstraction and radical performance? Standing in front of Steiner’s works or tracing his legacy through the Hamburger Bahnhof, such questions echo and linger. Few artists have so vigorously charted the uncharted between canvas, camera, and collaborative event. Mike Steiner’s name, therefore, resonates far beyond the expected – it stands for the restless, pioneering spirit of Contemporary Arts Berlin.

Discover contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner – see the highlights here

Steiner’s entry into the world of art was precocious: presenting "Still Life with Jug" at Berlin’s Great Art Exhibition at just 17, he made it clear early on that the conventional frame could never contain his ambitions. In the early 1960s, Steiner electrified the scene with vibrant, informally painted canvases. Those formative years embed him in the heated milieu of Kreuzberg’s alternative circles, where figurative urbanity meets the urge for abstraction.

Yet, even in these early paintings, one senses an artist restless for new forms of expression. Steiner’s sojourns in New York in the late 1960s, where Lil Picard introduced him to Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, and the ephemeral world of Happenings, would mark a radical turning point. The influence of Robert Motherwell, Joseph Beuys, and the American avant-garde cannot be understated: Steiner was quick to detect that painting alone could not capture a world dominated by moving images and performance.

Steiner’s Hotel Steiner in 1970 and, even more so, the Studiogalerie from 1974 became Berlin’s epicenters for radical experimentation. Here, international contemporaries such as Marina Abramovi? and Valie Export performed, while Steiner’s own video camera captured revolutionary moments. The atmosphere rivaled New York’s Chelsea Hotel, a point where conversations were as much artistic events as official exhibitions.

This era’s defining moment came in 1976: Steiner, alongside Ulay, engineered "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst" – a provocative art action involving the brief removal of Spitzweg’s famous painting. The public was shocked; the art world, inspired. Steiner’s role as both documentarist and instigator placed him at the vanguard of contemporary artistic discourse. Similar to Nam June Paik or Bill Viola, he wielded video as both witness and weapon, preserving acts meant to be fleeting while raising new questions about authorship, genre, and transience.

By the 1980s, Steiner’s focus on video did not mean the abandonment of painting. Instead, projects such as his "Painted Tapes" series fused painterly gesture with the single frame of film, extending the logic of abstraction into time-based media. This intermedial approach finds resonances with contemporaries like Gerhard Richter, who likewise interrogates the interplay of media, and Allan Kaprow, who erased the border between artwork and event.

Mike Steiner’s contribution, however, is unique in Berlin’s context. The founding of the Studiogalerie provided a vital platform where video art could not just be seen but produced and debated. Steiner’s camera chronicled performances by feminist avant-garde stars or Fluxus legends just as rigorously as his own experiments. The fluid switch between artist, curator, producer, and collector made Steiner a singular figure in Germany’s art landscape.

His commitment to the evolution of contemporary art is perhaps best memorialized at the Hamburger Bahnhof. In 1999, the National Gallery honored Steiner with a major solo exhibition, celebrating both his color-intensive paintings and his pioneering video works. Today, his donated video collection serves as a core resource for researchers and enthusiasts delving into the history of multimedia art within the museum’s walls. The presence of such influential contemporaries in the collection – Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, Bill Viola – further elevates Steiner’s role as a key networker and documentarian of the international avant-garde.

Stylistically, Steiner’s artistic signature is marked by unbridled curiosity: hard-edge geometric abstractions appear alongside spontaneous, gestural fields of color. His later works—especially from the 2000s onward—engage deeply with abstract painting, while his "Testbild as Readymade" series and photographic projects expand the repertoire of contemporary image-making. Steiner’s art oscillates between the tactile surface and the dematerialized vision of video, revealing a conceptual rigor reminiscent of Gary Hill as well as the material sensuality of earlier European abstract painters.

Certainly, Mike Steiner’s life and practice were always entwined. The legend of the Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie, the rupture of media throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the passionate collecting and archiving – all speak of an artist animated by the question: What should art be in our seismically shifting present? As a teacher, mentor, and later as television presenter of the influential "Videogalerie" program, Steiner widened the audience for video art exponentially, much as Gerry Schum had done in earlier years.

Perhaps it is the maverick spirit, above all, that keeps Steiner’s works and legacy alive. Amidst Contemporary Arts Berlin, with its multitude of competing voices, Steiner’s oeuvre stands for both relentless inquiry and a willingness to disrupt. His interdisciplinary method anticipated today’s boundary-crossing installations just as much as the persistence of painting’s emotional force.

For those who wish to study or experience Steiner’s full spectrum, a visit to his official artist website – comprehensive info and image archive offers unique material and inspiration. The deep connections between performing arts, video, and painting reflected there make clear why Mike Steiner counts among the enduring architects of contemporary visual culture.

In summary, the legacy of Mike Steiner is a testament to the transformative energy of contemporary art. His engagement with both abstract paintings and innovative video installations—not to mention his role at the Hamburger Bahnhof—cements his standing among visionaries like Marina Abramovi?, Joseph Beuys, and Nam June Paik. Exploring Mike Steiner is to enter into a dialogue with the fluidity and experiment that remain the pulse of art today.