Mike Steiner: A Pioneer of Contemporary Art Bridging Painting, Video, and Berlin’s Avant-Garde
Berlin, January 8, 2026 – Contemporary art finds a compelling advocate in Mike Steiner. His innovative blend of abstract painting, video, and performance shaped Berlin’s artscape and global perspectives on experimental media. Steiner’s multifaceted oeuvre, characterized by an urban, experimental, and visionary pulse, redefined the boundaries between brushstroke and moving image, leaving a profound legacy in the art world.
The story of Mike Steiner’s contemporary art practice is one of continuous transformation. Born in Allenstein in 1941, Steiner’s early fascination with film soon intertwined with a distinctive personal language in painting. His debut at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959 as a teenager showcased a clear predilection for abstraction, which later became a hallmark of his celebrated abstract paintings. These formative years saw him exhibiting alongside other emerging figures of German postwar art, such as Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke, in key European cities, solidifying Steiner’s impact on the evolving tapestry of contemporary arts in Berlin.
From New York to Berlin: Embracing the Avant-Garde
Steiner’s relentless pursuit of new forms and his refusal to be confined by a single medium propelled his career into extraordinary directions. His return from transformative stays in New York, where he engaged with Fluxus pioneers like Allan Kaprow and Lil Picard, marked his embrace of a truly contemporary art spirit: borderless, networked, and collaborative. Following his interactions with the artistic avant-garde of both Europe and America, Berlin became Steiner’s primary stage. The 1970 opening of Hotel Steiner near the Kurfürstendamm quickly became a hub for creative exchange, akin in flair and significance to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, home to Andy Warhol and pop art legends. This initiative underscored Steiner’s exceptional talent for fostering artistic communities.
Pioneering Video Art and Performance
Steiner’s contributions reached their peak where different media converged. By the early 1970s, his growing doubts about the limitations of painting led him to the nascent field of video art-a pivotal decision that resonated throughout contemporary art history. Inspired by the experimental ethos of Art/Tapes/22 in Florence and collaborating directly with Al Hansen, Steiner established the Studiogalerie in 1974. This independent forum and production hub for video art and performance was committed to liberating artists from technological and institutional constraints. Steiner provided essential resources for Berlin’s dynamic 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 distinguished Mike Steiner among artists was not only his innovative productions but also his ability to weave networks for others. Artists such as Marina Abramović, Ulay, VALIE EXPORT, and Carolee Schneemann found in his Studiogalerie a vital space for fearless performance and video experimentation. Steiner’s own documentation of works like Abramović’s “Freeing the Body” or Ulay’s legendary theft action “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst” not only preserved these events but also shaped the aesthetic vocabulary of performance and video art worldwide.
His own video works, many produced in collaboration or as visual records of ephemeral pieces, expanded into a playful, nearly synesthetic realm with series like the “Painted Tapes.” Here, painting and electronic video merged, offering a singular example in multimedia experimentation. This approach aligns him, in spirit, with multimedia renegades such as Gary Hill or even Pipilotti Rist, artists who consistently dissolved the barriers between sight, sound, and surface.
Bringing Art to the Public: The “Videogalerie” and Archival Legacy
The late 1980s and 1990s saw another shift in Mike Steiner’s focus. 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 projected contemporary arts in Berlin and beyond onto a larger national canvas. Such a commitment to mediation and outreach was rare and remarkably 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 collection eventually became the Mike Steiner Collection, entrusted to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and now 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 artists 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, performative presence, and a medium’s spirit rather than its mere mechanics. The viewer is consistently 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 that of Joseph Beuys, an artist with whom he was personally acquainted and who also understood art as both process and community intervention. While abstraction in his late paintings modulates into meditative surfaces, his video and performance pieces remain restless, probing, sometimes dazzlingly off-kilter, always contemporary.
A Lasting Impact on Generations and the Future of Art
Parallel to his activities as an artist and archivist, Steiner’s efforts as an organizer and juror (for instance, with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD) further cemented Berlin’s role as a center for avant-garde practice. While much of his video legacy awaits full digitization, what has already surfaced-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.
Source: https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/ueberblick/mike-steiner-contemporary-art-pioneer-bridging-painting-video-and/68470882
