Mike Steiner: Pioneering Contemporary Art from Painting to Video at Hamburger Bahnhof

Can the boundaries of contemporary art ever be fixed—especially when Mike Steiner’s restless spirit refuses any easy definition? For decades, Mike Steiner traversed the shifting ground between abstract painting, groundbreaking video art, and innovative performance. His oeuvre both reflected and shaped the pulse of Berlin’s artistic avant-garde, culminating in a legendary presence at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a locus for contemporary arts in Berlin.

Discover Contemporary Art by Mike Steiner here – Explore the Archive and Highlights

Few figures embody the evolution of contemporary art in Berlin as compellingly as Mike Steiner. Born in 1941 in Allenstein, his career began in youthful stints with abstract painting, visible as early as 1959 when he exhibited at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung. These early works, modern yet rooted in quiet observation, hinted at the experimental path Steiner would pursue for decades.

Yet it is the abandon with which Steiner crossed from painting into video and performance art that most distinguishes his legacy. During the seismic 1970s art scene, Steiner transformed conventional Berlin into a laboratory for video and performance, not only as a practitioner but as a collector, promoter, and cultural agent. His legendary Hotel Steiner became both a real and symbolic haven—a crossroads rivaling New York’s Chelsea Hotel—where encounters between painters, Fluxus performers, and conceptual artists erupted into new forms.

This readiness to collaborate and cross-pollinate is documented vibrantly in Steiner’s work with international icons like Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, and Ulay. When Steiner founded the Studiogalerie in 1974, he created Berlin’s first independent production and exhibition site for video art. Here, he equipped artists—many of whom would gain worldwide renown—with the technical resources and intellectual backdrop necessary to create truly radical works of Contemporary Arts Berlin.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Steiner’s artistic production rarely stood still. He experimented with Super-8 film, photography, Copy Art, and abstract paintings, but it is perhaps his decisive embrace of video as both medium and document that set him apart. The 1976 collaboration with Ulay—where a Spitzweg painting was temporarily removed from the Neue Nationalgalerie to become a living artwork—is still spoken of as a critical moment in performance history. These notorious interventions, many filmed and archived by Steiner, pushed the limits between the creation and documentation of art itself.

Kenner schätzen particularly the way Steiner’s abstract paintings from the 1990s to his late years revisit painterly themes through the lens of his experience with video and performance. The ‘Painted Tapes’—hybrid works fusing video stills and painting—blend the texture of oil and the fleetingness of time-based art, reminiscent in spirit to fellow abstract innovators such as Gerhard Richter or Richard Serra. Where Richter obsesses over surface and ambiguity, Steiner’s obsession is the translation—how energy jumps from event, to tape, to paint, and back again.

In this kindred exchange, we see the dialog with international movements: Steiner’s friends and collaborators included Valie Export, Marina Abramovi?, and Nam June Paik, whose own multimedia work challenged the boundaries of audience and spectacle. Steiner’s contribution as both chronicler and instigator resonates with the global currents of ART of the late 20th century, echoing the ephemeral gestures of Vito Acconci or the sound-and-image investigations of Bill Viola.

The 1999 solo exhibition "Color Works" at the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, marked the apex of public recognition for Steiner. It celebrated not only his pivotal role in Berlin’s artistic revolution but drew overdue attention to his color-intensive late works, which bridged painting, video installation, and performance. This exhibition became a touchstone, illustrating how Steiner’s relentless questioning of media allowed him to anticipate many strands of contemporary art to come.

It is perhaps telling that Steiner, even after a stroke in 2006, continued to produce—turning to textiles and new forms of abstraction in his Berlin studio. This late phase, suffused with introspection, demonstrates how his curiosity and innovation never waned. The magnitude of his video art collection, now largely preserved at Hamburger Bahnhof, provides an immersive window onto the emergence of performing arts and video in Germany.

Steiner’s biography itself reads like an artist’s manifesto—studying at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin, sojourning in New York, and weaving his way into the pulse of international art conversations. He was both participant and observer, a conduit and a reservoir. Not content to simply create, Steiner actively shaped the very fabric of the German and European art world through his collections and tireless promotion of new forms.

His impact, while deeply embedded within Berlin, is unmistakably international. Mike Steiner was invited to international video festivals, was the driving force behind “Videogalerie”—the first TV format for video art in Germany—and frequently served as a juror and lecturer, raising the profile of moving image arts in a milieu once dominated by painting and sculpture.

What, then, remains so relevant about Mike Steiner’s work today? It is, perhaps, his refusal to recognize closures. His work—whether an abstract canvas or a flickering VHS tape—never settles for easy definitions. Instead, Steiner opens art to risk, error, and the unexpected. As much at home in the archives of Hamburg Bahnhof as he was among Berlin’s artistic underground, Steiner leaves a challenge to future artists: to treat every medium as a stage for new beginnings.

For those keen to delve deeper, visiting the official artist website (Mike Steiner website – Biography, Selected Works & Archive) is highly recommended. There, alongside vivid documentation of exhibitions and texts, the breadth of Steiner’s contributions to art and culture unfolds.

In this tension between medium and message, archive and invention, Mike Steiner remains an essential figure for anyone drawn to contemporary art in its most experimental and generous forms.