Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer Between Canvas and Video Innovation

When standing before the multifaceted oeuvre of Mike Steiner, a central figure of contemporary art, one question inevitably emerges: How can artistic radicalism persistently renew the limits between painting and the moving image? Mike Steiner’s creative journey, with its relentless experimentation and restless curiosity, reads like a chronicle of postwar artistic innovation—a story that, even today, pulses within the walls of Berlin’s leading art institutions.

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Mike Steiner, whose official biography and art archive can be explored at www.mike-steiner.de, was not merely a painter or videographer—he was a driving catalyst in the shifting landscape of contemporary arts in Berlin and beyond. Born in Allenstein in 1941, Steiner’s early fascination with film quickly interwove with his growing passion for painting. By his late teens, he was already exhibiting “Stillleben mit Krug” (1958) at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, marking a promising foundation that would soon expand well past the canvas.

Throughout the 1960s, Steiner’s artistic compass was reset by the dynamism of New York. Immersed in the city’s vibrant Fluxus, Happening, and Pop Art scenes, he interacted closely with luminaries like Al Hansen and Allan Kaprow, and found inspiration in the studios of Robert Motherwell. These early encounters left an indelible imprint on his evolving conception of art: process over product, collaboration over solitude, and cross-media exploration as the leitmotif.

Returning to Berlin, Steiner harnessed the city’s energy to found the almost mythical Hotel Steiner—a haven for international creatives not unlike New York’s Chelsea Hotel, hosting personalities such as Joseph Beuys. Here, in a climate of perpetual debate and artistic experimentation, he depended on the rhythm of artistic exchange, laying the groundwork for a new avant-garde. Lil Picard evocatively described the environment as a “home far away from home,” where the boundaries of art and life were blurred over midnight debates and impulsive collaborations.

Steiner’s pivotal turn to video unfolded in the early 1970s. Influenced by avant-garde filmmakers and the rise of experimental cinema, his initial works—often in collaboration with Fluxus luminaries like Al Hansen—extended the grammar of painting into the temporal dimension. The establishment of the Studiogalerie in West Berlin’s Ludwigkirchstraße in 1974 formalized this shift. Steiner’s Studiogalerie became a crucible for video art and performance, offering artists technical production means, exhibition space, and direct entry into the heart of Berlin’s experimental scene. Notable contemporaries who thrived in this setting included Valie Export, Marina Abramovi?, Jochen Gerz, and Carolee Schneemann—artists whose work, like Steiner’s, continues to challenge and unsettle the contemporary arts Berlin landscape.

What sets Steiner apart from other figures of his time, such as Nam June Paik or Bill Viola, is his dual role as both creator and enabler. His legendary documentation of Ulay’s notorious 1976 performance “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst”, involving the audacious (albeit temporary) removal of Spitzweg’s “Der arme Poet” from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, echoed with a spirit of intellectual insurrection, performance, and media critique. These were not just stunts: Steiner’s camera captured fleeting moments, preserving the ephemerality of performance as historical testimony—long before such strategies became mainstream in multimedia installation art.

Steiner’s methodology was as diverse as his influences. Throughout his career, he deployed Super 8 film, photography, Copy Art, slide series, and abstract paintings—each medium selected with an eye for the dialogue it might spark. His “Painted Tapes” from the 1980s epitomize his hybrid approach, fusing painted surfaces with electronically manipulated video footage. In music videos produced for Tangerine Dream (“Mojave Plan”, “Penumbras 3”), Steiner transformed sound and picture into chromatic visual scores, reflecting a striving to push abstract art into the digital epoch. His late period saw a return to abstract painting—a distillation, perhaps, of decades spent exploring the visual, the performative, and the conceptual.

His collection and curatorial activities are equally integral to his legacy. Steiner was among the first to systematically collect video art in Germany, amassing works by Richard Serra, Gary Hill, George Maciunas, and others, ultimately bequeathing his archive to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The historic exhibition “COLOR WORKS 1995-98” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, was more than a retrospective: it was a testament to a restless spirit who never ceased seeking new forms of expression.

But what drove this constant reinvention? Steiner’s biography, as outlined in the vivid archival records at www.mike-steiner.de, reveals an artist whose philosophy of “experiment and experience” drove him to explore formats far beyond traditional boundaries. His media-crossing curiosity—from abstract paintings, to performance, to the medially subversive output of his TV format “Videogalerie” (1985–1990), presenting over 120 episodes devoted to video art—sets him in dialogue with world figures like Allan Kaprow and even Joseph Beuys, both of whom championed experimentation and the social role of art.

Additionally, his commitment to fostering the next generation of artists, through lectures, workshops, and his own Studiogalerie, earned him an almost mythic status within the contemporary Berlin scene. His approach finds resonance today in the experimental practices seen at institutions like Hamburger Bahnhof and in the international circuit of multimedia art.

What remains most compelling in Mike Steiner’s contemporary art is this sense of intellectual generosity. His works demand engagement, inviting observers to consider not just the finished piece but the energetic, at times unruly, process of artistic genesis. Whether confronted by his vivid abstract paintings or his grainy, enigmatic videotapes, the viewer finds themselves entering a dialogue—a negotiation of meaning, memory, and the shifting borders of artistic form.

The presiding message of Mike Steiner’s archive: art is always in motion, forever responsive to its media, its audience, and its times. Few artists have so thoroughly fused the roles of maker, organizer, and critic within the evolving structure of the art world.

For those with a longing to experience the radical breadth of Mike Steiner’s vision, his official website offers a portal into a legacy that still stirs Berlin’s—and the world's—contemporary arts scene. Lovers of the performing arts, abstract painting, or installations will find themselves both challenged and invigorated. His work, archived and exhibited widely, stands as an open invitation to explore the boundaries of the possible.

For detailed information on Steiner's collections, biography, and a gallery of works, the extensive official artist website remains the authoritative resource: More about Mike Steiner and his legacy