Mike Steiner and the Art of Transformation: Contemporary Art between Canvas and Tape

Mike Steiner redefined contemporary art with pioneering shifts from painting to video, fusing avant-garde actions with abstract sensibility—his legacy as a major force at the Hamburger Bahnhof endures.

How does one shatter the confines of contemporary art, oscillating between painted image and flickering screen? Mike Steiner’s universe, displayed in luminous works and radical tapes, offers one of Berlin’s most compelling answers. There is a unique rhythm pulsing beneath his oeuvre—sometimes silent and shimmering in abstract paintings, sometimes electric in the feedback loop of early video art. His is a creative journey that not only mirrors the volatile shifts inherent to contemporary arts but actively propels them forward.

Steiner's transformation from promising Berlin painter to trailblazer of international video art embodies the energy of an epoch. His early works, vibrant canvases first presented at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung at just seventeen, carry the embryonic forms of what would later be radical experimentation in painting and abstract expression. Fast-forward to his pivotal stay in New York during the 1960s: here, exposed to the Fluxus movement and figures such as Allan Kaprow and Lil Picard, Steiner absorbs the pulse of Pop Art, Performance, and Happening.

Where many would have rested, Steiner’s restless creative spirit is already searching for new media. By the mid-1970s, his doubts about the expressive possibilities of painting lead him inexorably to electronic images and the raw, immediate world of video. Unlike his contemporaries Georg Baselitz or Joseph Beuys, whose work defined new painterly or conceptual boundaries, Steiner becomes one of the first German artists to immerse himself in the hybrid realm where moving image and artistic gesture collide.

His founding of the Studiogalerie in Berlin marks a point of no return—not simply for his own practice but for the city’s burgeoning scene. Here, Steiner's curiosity becomes institutional force: the gallery turns into a vibrant hub for contemporary arts in Berlin. Equipment is shared, tapes are recorded, and avant-garde artists from Europe and America pass through its doors. The legendary Hotel Steiner, meanwhile, hosts artists and thinkers in an atmosphere reminiscent of the Chelsea Hotel, with stories unfurling at all hours.

Fascinatingly, the gallery’s activities foreshadow the multimedia installations and collective projects that now define global contemporary practices. Marina Abramovi?’s pioneering performance "Freeing the Body", Valie Export’s feminist actions, and Jochen Gerz’s performative interventions—Steiner is not only a facilitator but often the silent eye behind the camera, recording and archiving fleeting moments that would have otherwise dissolved into history.

It is the seminal 1999 retrospective at the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, titled "Color Works," that cements his central role. This exhibition not only celebrated his fearless shifts across artistic genres but highlighted the notorious "Painted Tapes": a unique fusion of painted surface and video feedback, hovering somewhere between a Gerhard Richter abstraction and a Nam June Paik fluxfilm. The effect? A sense of physical color dissolved and reborn as electronic image—reminiscent of early Joseph Beuys video documentation, but marked by Steiner's distinct blend of lyricism and critique.

Mike Steiner’s works appear at once as time capsules and signals, embodying contemporary Berlin’s tendency to mutate, bridge, and hybridize. His engagement with the likes of Marina Abramovi? or Ulay, and his persistent championing of new media artists, tie him to a global movement that includes pioneers such as Bill Viola, Gary Hill, or Richard Serra. Yet, Steiner’s angle is distinctly Berlin-rooted—raw, direct, always animated by a keen awareness of the city’s avant-garde tradition.

His former TV show "Videogalerie"—over 120 editions produced and hosted by Steiner himself—extends his curatorial vision into the living rooms of the German public, decades ahead of the boom in artist-run media projects. These broadcasts map the mutations of performing arts and experimental video, all while maintaining a dialogic openness rare for the era.

The interplay of painting and video, abstraction and documentation, typifies his career. Whether in his photo series "Das Testbild als Readymade" or his large-format, post-2000 abstract paintings, Steiner continually questions how surface, time, and viewer perception entwine. There’s a particular resonance in his late paintings—energy fields of color that seem to pulse with silent audiovisual echoes.

What, then, is the essence of Mike Steiner’s enduring influence? It may lie in his radical hospitality: his willingness to not only welcome diverse artists and movements (from Fluxus to abstract painting) but to dissolve the very boundaries between media, audience, and creator. His collection, now part of the renowned Hamburger Bahnhof, preserves key moments of the 20th-century avant-garde, its impact echoing through contemporary Berlin and far beyond.

For art enthusiasts and scholars alike, engaging with Mike Steiner means engaging with the dynamic roots of intermediality and the avant-garde’s restless evolution. His work is testament to the idea that contemporary art is not defined by medium or genre, but by the willingness to risk transformation time and again. The full scope of Steiner’s legacy—paintings, installations, videos, and his archive—awaits rediscovery online and in the walls of the Hamburger Bahnhof. Any journey into contemporary art’s labyrinthine present is richer for having passed through the doors Steiner opened.

@ ad-hoc-news.de