Mike Steiner and Contemporary Art: Pioneer of Video and Abstraction in Berlin

Contemporary art thrives on innovation, cross-pollination, and artists willing to challenge conventions. At the heart of Berlin’s artistic evolution stands Mike Steiner, whose lifelong exploration of contemporary art left indelible marks on painting and time-based media. What transforms the static canvas into living memory, or a fleeting performance into cultural legacy? Mike Steiner’s work traces these boundaries and pushes them ever outward.

Discover contemporary masterpieces and video art by Mike Steiner here

Bold colors, haunting images, and radical experimentation define Steiner’s oeuvre. Early in his career, as the archives at mike-steiner.de chronicle, he traversed the artistic terrain of postwar Germany and New York, investigating both abstract painting and the nascent field of video. Whether painting vast “Color Works” or collaborating in performance art, Steiner’s relentless curiosity is omnipresent—a quality that marks him as both artist and initiator.

Among Steiner’s most resounding achievements was his solo exhibition at the legendary Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in 1999, where his capacity for expressive color and media fusion was lauded. Today, his collection is an anchor of the museum’s holdings and signifies Berlin’s role in the international contemporary arts movement.

Steiner’s artistic flights started astonishingly early: by the late 1950s, he was already exhibiting oil paintings in Berlin, cultivating a voice distinct from mainstream trends. While peers like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke were gaining repute, Steiner was venturing further: in the 1960s, sojourns in New York under the mentorship of Lil Picard introduced him to the likes of Allan Kaprow and Al Hansen—pioneers of the Fluxus movement, who blended performance, sound, and processual art in ways that would profoundly mark Steiner’s own trajectory.

Yet painting alone did not suffice. The crisis of representation that gripped Steiner in the late 1960s propelled him from canvas to cathode ray tube. Inspired by experimental filmmakers like Michael Snow and Andy Warhol, his first collaborations in video emerged with Al Hansen, and by the early 1970s, Steiner was producing formidable new works—piece by piece, building the foundations for German video art.

The establishment of the Studiogalerie in 1974 was a key milestone. At a time when contemporary artists in Berlin yearned for platforms for exchange, Steiner provided not only exhibition space but precious access to video equipment. His gallery hosted happenings, performances, and video productions by celebrated artists such as Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, and Carolee Schneemann—names synonymous with the performing arts avant-garde. Steiner’s own camera became a witness and co-creator, documenting fleeting moments and grounding performance art as a living, reproducible medium.

Among the most notorious projects was his 1976 collaboration with Ulay: the orchestrated removal of Spitzweg’s "Der arme Poet" from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, an event both artistic intervention and media provocation. Such actions exemplified Steiner’s commitment to the boundaries between art and life, documentation and event—a commitment later taken up by artists like Richard Serra and Bill Viola, whose works would enter Steiner’s expanding archive.

Throughout, Steiner’s technical innovations kept pace with his conceptual ambitions. The 1980s saw him blend painting and video in his "Painted Tapes," integrating electronic imagery into traditional color fields—a technique echoing contemporaries such as Nam June Paik, but always infused with Steiner’s particular sense for rhythm and abstraction.

Steiner’s consolidation as both creator and collector is crucial. His tireless acquisition of performance and video works built a collection now preserved at the Hamburger Bahnhof, documenting the rise of the performing arts in Berlin and the legacy of international figures, including George Maciunas and Gary Hill. This unique archive not only underpins academic research but continues to inspire installations and curated exhibitions.

Comparing Mike Steiner to other seminal artists in the realm of Contemporary Arts Berlin, his approach mirrors the cross-disciplinary fervor of Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, while his painterly output is reminiscent of abstract pioneers like Sean Scully. Yet where others maintained clearer boundaries between genre or discipline, Steiner endlessly sought intersections: a painting becomes a video frame, a video morphs into installation, performance seeps into documentation. In this sense, Steiner stands as a proto-multimedia artist, decades before digital artists such as Bill Viola or Gary Hill found international fame.

His later years marked another stylistic swerve. Convalescing after a stroke in 2006, Steiner returned to abstract paintings, letting the brush’s gestures recapture his energetic vision. Rich chromatic surfaces and textile works from this period attest to the artist’s enduring inventiveness, even as he withdrew from public life.

Throughout, the thread that unites Mike Steiner’s artistic life remains a fascination with media, temporality, and the experiential. Whether constructing entire “art hotels” in Berlin or curating “Berlin Video” programs abroad, his interventions transcended the making of works and shaped the structures of the art world itself.

Why does Mike Steiner’s legacy matter in today’s contemporary art dialogue? His experimental spirit, documented at mike-steiner.de, is both a challenge and an invitation. For collectors and curators, his archive represents a gulf of yet-undiscovered media history; for artists, his example serves as a testament to the necessity—and rewards—of risk. As a visitor to his collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof or an explorer of his many-sided output, one enters a sphere where the boundaries of art remain forever open, unpredictable, and full of potential.

Those with a passion for contemporary visual culture, performance, or the technological avant-garde should not miss the opportunity to experience Steiner’s groundbreaking works. For a deeper journey into his world, compelling resources, personal texts, and a full spectrum of his works await at the comprehensive official Mike Steiner website.