Mike Steiner and the Boundless Horizons of Contemporary Art: From Painting to Video Revolution

What makes the art of Mike Steiner so gripping? Is it the variety of his media — spanning from abstract paintings to radical videoworks — or the energy of Berlin’s avant-garde that pulses through each creative phase? Simply stated, Mike Steiner’s contribution to contemporary art is an exhilarating invitation to the unpredictable, an oeuvre shaped by restlessness, vision, and a commitment to new artistic frontiers.

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When traversing the dense archive of Mike Steiner, as meticulously presented on his official website, one encounters a figure in constant motion. Born Klaus-Michel Steiner in Allenstein (now Olsztyn) in 1941, Steiner’s biography reads like a map of twentieth-century art itself — from his early paintings at Berlin’s Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in the 1950s, through the wild charisma of the Kreuzberger Bohème, to formative years in New York among Fluxus icons like Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, and Al Hansen. The cultural crosscurrents of these places and friendships would ignite Steiner’s lifelong search for new aesthetic forms.

Steiner’s initial acclaim came through painting. As an adolescent, he was welcomed into exhibitions as one of Berlin’s youngest artists. His abstract paintings from the 1960s reflect a fearless play with color and form, vibing with contemporaries like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke. But even amidst success, Steiner’s curiosity about the nature of art — its capacity for immediacy and real-time reaction — already simmered.

The pivotal move arrived in the early 1970s. Drawn by the vitality of experimental film and performance in New York and Berlin, and encouraged by Kaprow and Hansen, Steiner began to shift his focus toward video art. His literal and metaphorical rooms—Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie—became legendary sites for Contemporary Arts Berlin: laboratories for Fluxus, performance, and what we now recognize as the rise of European video art. Within these walls, Steiner fostered an exhilarating dialogue, inviting artists such as Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, and Ulay to create and perform. The Studiogalerie was more than an exhibition hall; it was a living archive of performing arts and a new model of artistic community.

Central to Steiner’s growing reputation was his ability to see video not merely as documentation, but as an autonomous, painterly medium. His "Painted Tapes" fused electronic images with gestural abstraction, echoing the restless innovations of Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Richard Serra. Fascinating here is Steiner’s sense for documenting the ephemeral. Pieces like his video records of Ulay’s infamous 1976 action—removing Spitzweg’s "Der arme Poet" from the Neue Nationalgalerie—are both artwork and witness, conserving the volatile spirit of the moment for future generations.

The integration of video, performance, and painting reached high public visibility in 1999, when Mike Steiner’s monumental solo exhibition, "Color Works," was presented at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. This show marked a milestone not only for Steiner but for German contemporary art as a whole. As critics and visitors discovered, Steiner’s works transcend the media boundaries, balancing the atmospheric intensity of abstract paintings with the structural rigor of conceptual art and multimedia installation.

It is tempting, perhaps, to compare Steiner’s capacious practice with other titans of his era—Joseph Beuys’s social sculptures, Bruce Nauman’s spatial video installations, or Marina Abramovi?’s charged performances—but Steiner walked his own path. If Beuys shaped mythologies and Nauman rearranged the gallery space, Steiner gave the artist’s hand a new agency within media environments, inviting painting to meet the flicker of the electronic image. The result is an oeuvre that sits confidently among the best of the performing and visual arts’ convergence.

Equally important is Steiner’s impact as a collector and curator, especially pronounced in his vast video archive. Having assembled early tapes by the likes of Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, and George Maciunas, Steiner ensured works vital to the performing arts and abstract experimentation would be preserved and contextualized. Today, these holdings form a key part of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s permanent collection, serving as a wellspring for researchers and art lovers fascinated by Germany’s artistic avant-garde.

Steiner’s biographical journey, marked by resilience and cosmopolitan curiosity, shaped a unique sensitivity to the political and technological contexts of his time. After returning from the United States—where he narrowly avoided the Vietnam draft—he completed his studies and dove into Berlin’s cultural ferment. The restless adaptation of his media—from painting and Super 8 film to electronic video, photography, dia-series, and eventually textile art—underscores a lifelong commitment to pushing the limits of artistic practice. As he confided in interviews and texts, every new medium was both a promise and a challenge, a step further beyond the familiar.

Pivotal, too, was Steiner’s engagement with the presentation and mediation of art. His "Videogalerie" television series, aired on Berlin’s cable network from 1985 to 1990, brought the excitement of contemporary art exhibitions and artist interviews to a broader audience, much as Gerry Schum’s seminal Fernsehgalerie had done in the late 1960s. Steiner’s platform offered rare glimpses into the process and philosophy behind the works of leading international artists, and firmly established video as a significant cultural discourse in Germany.

In his later years, following a stroke in 2006 and subsequent withdrawal from public life, Steiner’s focus returned to abstract painting and innovative textile works at his Berlin studio. Yet for all this restlessness, a throughline persists: the deep fascination with the act of seeing, the collision of accident and intention, the assertion that every medium—whether shimmering screen or loaded paint—is ultimately a space for living encounter.

Mike Steiner’s legacy within contemporary art is, at heart, both experimental and communal. At every turn, he questioned how artists might generate meaning between ephemeral gesture and lasting imprint. His role as artist, instigator, documentarian, and curator remains felt in the vitality of Berlin’s artistic networks and the preservation of seminal works at major institutions.

For enthusiasts of contemporary art, engaging with Mike Steiner’s work is an invitation to reconsider the potential of the cross-disciplinary. His presentations at crucial venues, including the Hamburger Bahnhof and international performance festivals, opened pathways for future generations to explore intermedia creation without fear or convention.

To understand the spirit of contemporary arts in Berlin—and the pulse of European avant-garde from the 1970s onward—means to revisit the restless vision of Mike Steiner. Explore his vivid, multifaceted body of work online and experience firsthand how art’s boundaries become new beginnings.

Delve deeper into Mike Steiner’s biography and complete works on his official website