Mike Steiner: Pioneer of Contemporary Art and Visionary of Video Art in Berlin
28.12.2025 - 18:28:02Mike Steiner stands for the avant-garde of contemporary art. His multimedia visions, from abstract painting to groundbreaking video projects, shape Berlin's scene today.
There is an electric allure to the work of Mike Steiner, whose name has become synonymous with contemporary art in Berlin. At first glance, his oeuvre may appear like a shifting mosaic daring us to question where painting ends and the moving image begins. Steiner’s sense for the experimental, for disruption, for fusing classical and modern techniques, draws viewers into an artistic world where boundaries blur and creative energies pulse.
Discover contemporary masterpieces by Mike Steiner here
Immersing oneself in the body of work and biography of Mike Steiner, as thoroughly documented on his official website, reveals the traces of a restless innovator. Steiner—who was born in Allenstein in 1941 and made Berlin his creative home—never ceased to reinvent himself. From his first public appearance at the tender age of seventeen at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, to his studies in Free Art at Berlin's Hochschule für Bildende Künste under Hans Kuhn, Steiner’s path was one of constant transformation.
What sets Steiner apart in the universe of contemporary arts Berlin is, above all, his pivotal role as a pioneer of video art. Long before the era of digital omnipresence, he recognized that moving images could serve as both an expressive and documentary tool. In 1970 he created the legendary Hotel Steiner on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm—a haven for avant-garde artists, often compared to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, gathering figures such as Joseph Beuys and Arthur Köpcke in an atmosphere thick with creativity. Soon after, he shifted his focus further to video: drawing inspiration from formative encounters with Fluxus artists like Al Hansen and Allan Kaprow in New York, Steiner began creating works that married experimental film and performance.
His formative years among the giants of an emerging global art scene—sharing rooms with Lil Picard and exchanging ideas in the same circles as Allan Kaprow and Robert Motherwell—did more than impact Steiner’s own practice; they catalyzed a broader evolution in Berlin’s scene. Like Nam June Paik or Bill Viola, Steiner embraced the potential of video as a disruptive, democratizing form. But unlike many contemporaries, he simultaneously explored the tactile media, keeping one hand on painting, the other on the camera.
The Studiogalerie, which Steiner founded in Berlin in 1974, became ground zero for a generation of actionists—among them Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, and Jochen Gerz. Here, vision was not confined to the rectangle of the canvas or screen: the gallery was an “open project,” a production house, exhibition space, and stage for radical performance and ephemeral art. The creation of iconic videos such as his documentation of Abramovi?’s “Freeing the Body” (1976), or the legendary intervention with Ulay—when the infamous Spitzweg painting "Der arme Poet" was spirited away from the Neue Nationalgalerie as both protest and performance—remain milestones in the annals of performance and video history.
The core of Steiner’s creative output, as well as his philosophical foundation, lies in the cross-pollination of genres: abstract paintings, daring art installations, performative works, and, perhaps most characteristically, “Painted Tapes”—visual fusions of video and painterly gesture. Steiner’s “Color Works,” prominently presented in his solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in 1999, encapsulate an almost synesthetic merging of disciplines. This major show punctuated his standing not just as an innovator within German contemporary art, but as a bridge between the tactile pleasures of painting and the immersive horizons of the electronic image.
Stylistically, Steiner moved effortlessly between hard-edge minimalism, lyrical abstraction, Pop-Art influences, and conceptual performance. His late works, especially from the 2000s onward, shift towards powerful abstract painting, often combining intense color fields with subtle references to his earlier exploration of temporality and spatial destabilization, as seen in his video pieces. For Steiner, “to paint” sometimes meant “to film” and vice versa; he saw the two acts as interdependent.
This interdisciplinary approach set Steiner apart from even the most celebrated artists of his era. While peers like Marina Abramovi? shaped performance art by putting the body in the center, or Nam June Paik made television the marble of a new sculpture, Steiner hovered between the roles of creator, chronicler, and catalyst. The “Steiner Art Tapes” not only reflect his personal artistic evolution but document an era, a city, and an aesthetic revolution—an invaluable archive now housed in the collection of the Hamburger Bahnhof. Contemporary exhibitions, such as “AUGENFUTTER BILDERFRESSER—from tape to paint,” continue to reveal the breadth of his legacy, contextualizing it alongside today’s discourse on video, performance, and painting.
Looking at his biography, certain key moments are emblematic. After a formative sojourn in the US, culminating in encounters with key Fluxus figures, Steiner’s return to Berlin marked the beginning of his relentless championing of new media. An early acute awareness of the limitations of painting led him to explore “legitimation crises” of artistic medium—a struggle he resolved not by giving up paint or celluloid, but by blending them. Across the decades—from his youngest days as an exhibiting painter, through his tenure as a tireless promoter of others' work, up to his quietly abstract late period—Steiner’s versatility and curiosity knew no bounds.
One should also not underestimate his impact as a collector, producer, and mediator. His video collection, begun with a purchase in 1974, grew to include influential works by international luminaries such as Richard Serra, Gary Hill, Valie Export, Bill Viola, and George Maciunas. This effort made Steiner a central node in the transmission and preservation of postwar art’s most ephemeral experiments.
Mike Steiner’s importance within the framework of artists who defined the late 20th-century Berlin—alongside figures such as Joseph Beuys, George Baselitz, Marina Abramovi?, and Allan Kaprow—resides in this almost utopian belief in the permeability of artistic forms. His legacy, preserved in archival holdings and a multitude of abstract paintings and art installations, continues to inspire debates on what constitutes contemporary art and who gets to define its limits.
What remains most captivating about Steiner’s life's work is the balance of rigour and play, documentation and vision, historical depth and radical openness to the new. Like the city he called home, his art is a palimpsest—layered, fractured, always in flux and always inviting reconsideration.
In conclusion, Mike Steiner’s contributions to contemporary art remain vital. They challenge us to reinterpret art history, to listen for the crackle of the analog within the digital, and above all, to value courage and experimentation as the driving force in art. His unwavering curiosity ensures that his work will remain both relevant and inspiring for future generations of artists and admirers alike.
