Mike Steiner stands as a key figure in contemporary art, blending experimental painting, performance, and pioneering video work. His unique legacy still shapes the pulse of Berlin’s artistic avant-garde. His oeuvre is characterized by an unmistakable energy, a recurring vibration between stillness and movement, painting and video, material and immaterial.
Early Life and Artistic Development
Born in West Berlin, Steiner’s artistic journey began with a restless curiosity that led him to abandon a path as a film technician for the free realms of painting. His trajectory from student, to painter, to video and performance art catalyzer is mapped in the very evolution of Berlin’s avant-garde, particularly through the 1970s and 80s.
Steiner’s earliest acclaim came with painting-informalist and coolly gestural works that gained notice at the famed Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959. He later participated in group shows across Geneva, Milan, and Paris alongside prominent artists like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke. A significant period in New York, where he was exposed to the intellectual climate of Fluxus and Pop Art, brought him into personal contact with figures such as Lil Picard, Al Hansen, and, at the fringes, Allan Kaprow and Robert Motherwell. This exposure to concept-driven, interdisciplinary ethos resonated deeply with Steiner and paved the way for his later innovations in Contemporary Arts Berlin.
Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie: Hubs of Artistic Exchange
Upon his return to Berlin in the late 1960s, Steiner opened the legendary Hotel Steiner in 1970. This establishment became not just a physical haven but a crucible for artistic exchange, frequented by luminaries including Joseph Beuys and Arthur Køpcke. Its atmosphere was often likened to the mythic status of the Chelsea Hotel, blurring the lines between art, discussion, and lifestyle, foreshadowing Steiner’s future commitment to activating art as a lived, shared, and social experience.
A decisive pivot occurred in 1974 when Steiner, influenced by his time in Florence’s Art/Tapes/22 and collaborations with Fluxus artists like Al Hansen, founded Berlin’s Studiogalerie. This newly minted hub became ground zero for video art and live performance in the city-a vital east-west crossroads for new media and performance. The Studiogalerie was comparable in ambition to venues such as Cologne’s Kunstverein under Wulf Herzogenrath. Crucially, Steiner provided artists with access to equipment and exhibition space, democratizing video’s creative tools and hosting radical performances by artists such as Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and Marina Abramovi?. He not only curated but also filmed and produced, capturing the fleeting intensity of body art and action works.
Provocation and Innovation: The Artist’s Approach
The notorious 1976 action “Irritation-There is a Criminal Touch in Art”, orchestrated with Ulay in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, highlights Steiner’s approach to provocation as a mode of critical inquiry. As a producer and documenter, his practice recalls contemporaries like Nam June Paik and Bill Viola, yet Steiner’s Berlin-centric laboratory anticipated the multi-artist, archival impulse now seen in the work of Hans Ulrich Obrist or the legacy-building of Gary Hill.
Steiner’s technical fingerprint is polymorphic. His celebrated “Painted Tapes” demonstrate his ability to hybridize, overlaying painting gestures onto video stills, or reversing this relationship so that the physical painting absorbs electronic imagery. These works are neither wholly moving nor wholly static-they vibrate with color, tempo, gesture, and the echo of narrative-a synthesis found only in Steiner’s practice, distinct even from the installations of Richard Serra or the multi-channel tapes of John Baldessari. Steiner’s “Painted Tapes” probe the psychological resonance of color and abstraction, as well as the tension between media; they are neither nostalgia nor pastiche, but genuine syntheses that embody the spirit of contemporary art installations.
Later Works and Enduring Legacy
Throughout the 1980s, Steiner intensified this interdisciplinary approach. His involvement with performance and video documentation featured not only international artists but also the rising Berlin scene. Nuanced photo works, such as the “Das Testbild als Readymade” series, reflected his lifelong engagement with everyday visual culture. Simultaneously, his own journey as a collector paralleled his practice, as corroborated by the comprehensive Berlin Video collection ultimately entrusted to the Hamburger Bahnhof, now a linchpin of video art history.
The apex of formal recognition came in 1999 with a major retrospective at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, entitled “Color Works”. This exhibition celebrated Steiner’s gattungsübergreifendes Denken-his cross-genre thinking-showcasing canvases pulsating with spectral colors, video installations looping with haunting lyricism, and archival footage presented as both document and living memory. The show cemented Steiner’s place among the foundational figures of postwar German contemporary arts, linking him to, yet distinguishing him from, peers like Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Marina Abramovi?. Even after a severe stroke in 2006, he continued to produce abstract paintings and textile works from his Berlin studio, demonstrating resilience and an unbroken drive for innovation. His output, particularly in abstract painting, increased through the 2000s, ensuring that the arc of his career was one of continual regeneration, not withdrawal.
Mike Steiner’s biography is not just a chronicle of awards and exhibitions-from the early days at Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, through participations with Haus am Waldsee and the Nationalgalerie, to DNA Galerie and international venues-but a vivid portrait of energy, networks, and radical openness. This includes profound exchanges with the likes of Joseph Beuys, Ben Vautier, Valie Export, and collaborations documented in his vast video archive. The art public and critics alike recognize Mike Steiner as a trailblazer, whose relevance only deepens with time. His command of color, his defiance of medium boundaries, and his insistence on the interconnectedness of performance, painting, and media reflect some of the most vital impulses in today’s contemporary art. The continuing presence of his works in collections-and his archive at the official artist website-invite new generations to uncover the layered complexities of his production.
Source: https://www.ad-hoc-news.de/boerse/news/ueberblick/mike-steiner-and-contemporary-art-pioneering-video-performance-and/68565363
