Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer Bridging Painting, Video, and Berlin’s Avant-Garde

Contemporary art is rarely so thoroughly lived as in the multifaceted oeuvre of Mike Steiner. Stepping into the flow of his works, one senses a pulse at once urban, experimental, and visionary—a pulse that shaped not only Berlin’s art scene but also resonated internationally. How does one redefine the boundary between brushstroke and moving image? Mike Steiner, restlessly inventive, made this question a driving force and a hallmark of his legacy.

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The story of Mike Steiner’s contemporary art practice is one of transformation. Born in 1941 in Allenstein, Steiner’s early fascination with film soon intersected with an intense personal language in painting. As a teenager, he made his debut at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959, already demonstrating a predilection for abstraction that would later crystallize in his celebrated abstract paintings. These early years unfolded alongside other emerging figures of German postwar art, including Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke, with whom he exhibited in key European cities—making Steiner’s mark on the evolving tapestry of contemporary arts in Berlin.

Yet it was the constant quest for new forms, and the refusal to be bound by a medium, that propelled Steiner’s career into extraordinary directions. His return from formative stays in New York, where he mingled with Fluxus pioneers like Allan Kaprow and Lil Picard, signified an embrace of a truly contemporary art spirit: borderless, networked, and collaborative. After meeting the artistic avant-garde of both Europe and America, Steiner’s own Berlin became his primary stage. The 1970 opening of Hotel Steiner, near the Kurfürstendamm, soon became synonymous with creative exchange—akin in flair and significance to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, home of Andy Warhol and pop art legends—which underscored Steiner’s talent for building artistic communities.

Steiner’s contributions peak where media blend. By the early 1970s, his doubts about painting’s limits led him to the emerging field of video. It was a pivotal decision echoing throughout contemporary art history. Inspired by the experimental ethos of Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, and with direct collaboration with Al Hansen, Steiner established the Studiogalerie (1974), an independent forum and production hub for video art and performance. Committed to freeing artists from technological and institutional constraints, he provided resources for Berlin’s dynamo of intermedia creators—pioneering a Berlin equivalent to the activities of Wulf Herzogenrath in Cologne, and rivaling international contemporaries such as Nam June Paik and Bill Viola in vision and reach.

What set Mike Steiner apart among artists was not just his own innovative productions but also the way he wove networks for others—artists such as Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, VALIE EXPORT, and Carolee Schneemann found in his Studiogalerie a site for fearless performance and video experimentation. The documentation by Steiner himself of works like Abramovi?’s "Freeing the Body" or the legendary Ulay theft action “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst” went on to shape not just the memory, but the aesthetic vocabulary, of performance and video art worldwide.

His own video works—many produced in collaboration or as visual records of ephemeral works—expanded into the playful, near-synesthetic zone with series like the "Painted Tapes," where painting and electronic video merged—a singular example in the context of multimedia experimentation. This approach aligns him, in spirit, with multimedia renegades such as Gary Hill or even Pipilotti Rist, artists who dissolve the barriers between sight, sound, and surface.

The late 80s and 90s saw Mike Steiner’s focus shifting again. The founding of the "Videogalerie" television format (1985–1990) marked another innovative stride: bringing contemporary video art, interviews, and debates directly into public living rooms via cable. Over 120 episodes witnessed the projection of contemporary arts in Berlin and beyond onto a larger national canvas. Such commitment to mediation and outreach was rare—and prescient, given the later explosion of media and performative practices in the digital era.

The significance of Mike Steiner’s archive must also be acknowledged. His collecting activity began in the 1970s, amassing a treasure trove of tapes by some of video and performance art’s most influential names. This became, in time, the Mike Steiner Collection, which was entrusted to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and is today conserved at the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. The monumental exhibition “COLOR WORKS” (1999) at the Hamburger Bahnhof crowned this legacy, highlighting both his painterly explorations and the importance of his video art and collection. Few see their vision so institutionally enshrined, yet for Steiner, whose career was built on mediation as much as creation, it was a fitting tribute.

What makes Steiner’s art—and archival stewardship—so enduring? Perhaps it is his rare grasp of color, of performative presence, of a medium’s spirit rather than its mere mechanics. The viewer is persistently confronted not only with images but with questions—about the nature of documentation, the performativity of gesture, and the ambiguities of the interface between digital and analog. In this way, Steiner’s work echoes those of Joseph Beuys—an artist with whom he was personally acquainted and who also understood art as both process and community intervention. Where abstraction in his late paintings modulates into meditative surfaces, his video and performance pieces remain restless, probing, sometimes dazzlingly off-kilter, always contemporary.

Parallel to his activities as artist and archivist, Steiner’s efforts as organizer and juror (for instance, with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD) further cemented Berlin’s role as a center for avant-garde practice. And while much of his video legacy awaits full digitization, what already surfaces—be it his performance documentation or his painted abstractions—invites not simply observation, but sustained engagement.

Fascinating, too, is the way Steiner’s career bridges generations—from the physical happenings and Fluxus events of the 1970s to the digitized realities of today’s art. The spirit of experiment pervades his entire trajectory.

His later work, especially after 2000, saw a renewed investment in abstract painting and textile art, a return to the tactile that in no way diminished his affinity for new media. This late phase, covered in exhibitions across prominent Berlin galleries and international venues, consolidates Mike Steiner’s place in the broader European tradition of contemporary art.

Mike Steiner’s legacy, therefore, is that of an artist and catalyst: someone who shaped not just the history of contemporary arts in Berlin, but the broader evolution of experimental practice globally. His archive, his paintings, and the memory of his collaborative galleries stand as living proof that the future of art is always, above all, a question of curiosity and courage.

For deeper insights and a visual journey into Mike Steiner’s world, visit his official artist website —it rewards a closer look.