Mike Steiner and the Pulse of Contemporary Art: Painter, Videopioneer, Visionary

How does one redefine the boundaries between painting and moving image? In the world of contemporary art, few names evoke this question as vibrantly as Mike Steiner. With a career spanning more than five decades, Steiner became both chronicler and catalyst of Berlin’s avant-garde, pioneering the very forms and formats that would come to dominate the global art discourse. His legacy, a testament to tireless innovation, continues to shape our understanding of contemporary arts in Berlin and beyond.

Discover contemporary art by Mike Steiner—explore his works and installations here

Mike Steiner’s artistic development is itself a journey through modern media history. Born in 1941 in Allenstein, Steiner's early life was marked by displacement and the upheavals of World War II, but it was in West Berlin that his passion for art truly flourished. As a teenager he first exhibited at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959—already signaling a restless creative spirit. By the early 1960s, Steiner had become a regular participant in the Kreuzberger Forum, immersing himself in the energetic, sometimes anarchic, Berlin art scene. Informal painting was just the starting point. His training at the Hochschule für bildende Künste under Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn positioned him among the promising new talents of the postwar period, exhibiting alongside artists like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke.

Yet Steiner’s story differs from his contemporaries in a crucial way: his career is defined by a relentless crossing of boundaries—between genres, media, and communities. The late 1960s marked a crucial turning point; a Ford Foundation scholarship took him to the United States. Living in New York, Steiner encountered the epoch-defining figures of Fluxus and Pop Art—Lil Picard, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and the peripheries of Andy Warhol’s circle. These formative years in the city’s experimental art world would stoke doubts about the expressive power of painting alone and ignite his fascination with moving images.

Returning to Berlin, Steiner opened the legendary Hotel Steiner in 1970, a hub likened to New York’s Chelsea Hotel for its spirit of artistic exchange. Here, Joseph Beuys and Arthur Køpcke rubbed shoulders with American artists, nurturing an international dialogue that would soon find its formal home in the 'Studiogalerie'—an independent platform dedicated to Video Art, Performative Arts, and the latest currents in abstract painting. The Studiogalerie, founded in 1974, offered rare production facilities for video and attracted visionaries such as Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, Ben Vautier, and Jochen Gerz—a who’s who of global performance and feminist art. Steiner was often not simply a host but a direct collaborator, orchestrating and recording performances, pushing the boundaries between documentation and creation. His documentation of Ulay’s infamous "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst" (1976), for instance, crystallized in video both the spirit of conceptual provocation and social critique that defined the era.

What distinguishes Steiner within the myriad of Berlin’s contemporary artists? Like Nam June Paik and Bill Viola, he saw in video not just a recording tool but a dynamic visual language. Yet Steiner remained persistently interdisciplinary. The 1980s saw him experimenting with Super-8 film, photography, Copy Art, Minimal Art, and especially his signature 'Painted Tapes'—artistic fusions of videotape and abstract painting. These works, such as "Mojave Plan" and "Penumbras 3," glow with electronic color and painterly intuition, shadowing the multimedia strategies of contemporaries like Gary Hill, Richard Serra, or even the formal preoccupations of Gerhard Richter.

Crucially, Steiner was not solely a creator but a facilitator and seismographer of new visual culture. His TV format "Videogalerie" (1985–1990) brought the discussions and aesthetics of global video art directly into Berlin homes, echoing Gerry Schum’s pioneering Fernsehgalerie but with a trademark Berlin twist—close to the scene, close to the pulse. Steiner frequently served as juror, curator, and speaker, his extensive archive steadily growing into one of the most important collections of avant-garde video. The comprehensive donation of his video art tapes—featuring artists as diverse as Emmett Williams, Nam June Paik, and Marina Abramovi?—to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz in 1999 was, in retrospect, an act of cultural foresight. Today, these masterpieces are safeguarded in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, placing Steiner unambiguously in the canon of contemporary art.

The 1999 solo exhibition "Color Works" at the Hamburger Bahnhof underlined not only the span of Steiner’s career but the internal logic of his oeuvre: a tireless curiosity and unwavering devotion to form, color, and cross-media dialogue. Later years saw a turn to abstract paintings, fabric works, and the curation of his own archive—a quiet but ongoing exploration of art’s boundaries in a rapidly changing world.

Mike Steiner’s artistic philosophy is that of the facilitator and the explorer. A restless spirit, quick to doubt received wisdom and experiment with the new, he created not just art but contexts in which art could happen. His lifetime intersected with the most urgent debates of performance and contemporary video, yet his work remains inexhaustibly fresh. "Fascinating is the way each medium overlays and reflects the other," observers often say. The calm of his late abstract paintings and the energy of his early video work together suggest art as a living, breathing organism—shaped by society, but always ahead of its curve.

It is perhaps this restless combination—of innovation, mediation, and artistic intensity—that continues to draw curators, collectors, and scholars back to Steiner’s archive and exhibitions. Within the story of contemporary arts Berlin, Mike Steiner holds a singular place—not only as an artist but as a node where historical currents, media, and personalities converged to galvanize an entire era.

For anyone keen to experience the ever-evolving legacy of Mike Steiner, visiting his official website offers deep dives into biographical detail, exhibition history, and an overview of his radical installations and painting cycles ????. The site is a must for deeper research and wonder.

In an age of rapid digital transformation, Steiner’s work serves as a reminder: contemporary art is not only about aesthetic pleasure or market value, but about risk, rupture, and the creative forging of new sensibilities.

Why engage with Mike Steiner’s art today? Because every aspect of his practice insists that art is an ongoing experiment—one that challenges, disorients, and ultimately shapes us. Whether in a luminous painting or a grainy video tape, his vision endures, urging fresh encounters. Contemporary art is rarely more vital than in the work and legacy of Mike Steiner.