Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Visionary and Pioneer of Video Art in Berlin

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art by fusing painting, video, and performance. His innovative work and the legendary Hamburger Bahnhof exhibition marked milestones in Berlin's avant-garde scene.

What defines the magic of contemporary art when boundaries blur between painting, moving image, installation, and the lived experience? Mike Steiner—visionary, painter, fluxus associate, and pioneer—spent his creative life probing precisely diese Grenzen. From early forays into abstract painting to his revolutionary embrace of video and performance, Steiner’s works vibrate with avant-garde energy, captivating both critics and connoisseurs of contemporary arts Berlin-wide and beyond.

From the very start, Mike Steiner pioneered what would become a signature approach: persistent crossing of artistic frontiers. Having debuted as one of the youngest talents at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959, he would soon play a central role in both German and international contemporary art. By the late 1960s, Steiner’s trajectory mirrored the intense current of the times, as Berlin positioned itself as a European epicentre for fluxus and performance—scenes fueled by artistic innovation.

Steiner's pivotal moment arrived in the 1970s. The establishment of the Hotel Steiner and the renowned Studiogalerie in Berlin saw him turn host, curator, and catalyst. These spaces, often compared to Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, attracted creative giants—Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export—offering refuge and inspiration in the heart of Germany’s cultural capital. Such meeting points for avant-garde artists proved crucial in cultivating a new attitude toward artistic experimentation, fuelled by a spirit of collective disruption and renewal.

It is his role as a forerunner of video art, however, that truly cements his place within the pantheon of Contemporary Arts Berlin. Inspired by Allan Kaprow and heavily influenced by connections in New York—think Robert Motherwell and Al Hansen—Steiner’s own production of video works dates to the early 1970s. Works such as the collaboration with Ulay, "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst" (1976), represent not just a technical but also a conceptual breakthrough, with art becoming action, event, and memory, preserved—thanks to the camera—beyond the fleeting instant.

A turning point came when his Studiogalerie directly supported emerging forms: providing costly video equipment to the Berlin scene; facilitating early work by groups such as INTERMEDIA; and hosting performances that would later be regarded as critical moments in the evolution of contemporary performance art. Through his camera lens, Steiner not only documented but also shaped the narrative arc of performance and video practice, preserving major happenings such as Marina Abramovi?’s Freeing the Body (1976).

Comparisons may be drawn between Steiner and other innovators: Nam June Paik, often dubbed the father of video art, whose playful, conceptual take on the medium resonates with Steiner’s relentless push for technical and conceptual newness; or Bruce Nauman, whose fascination with bodily presence and video overlaps with the Berlinese’s own preoccupations. Steiner’s creative kinship with these global artists, however, always remains distinctly Berlin-flavored—a product of the city’s raw, layered cultural history and openness to change.

One of the undoubted highlights of Steiner’s career—cementing his reputation on an institutional level—was his major solo exhibition in 1999 at the Hamburger Bahnhof (Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart), a show which brought together his mature periods in a symphonic display of color and intermedial thinking. Here, the fusion of video, painting, and installation works held audiences spellbound, confirming him not only as a daring technician but also as a thinker-about-art’s future. As the curators noted, his architectural thinking permeates not only his abstract paintings but also his treatment of videographic and spatial installations, challenging the viewer to interrogate their own perceptions of art and reality.

In later decades—particularly post-2000—Steiner returned to the roots of pigment and surface: abstract paintings and fabric works, where spontaneity meets formal rigor and color composes a language of its own. Yet even in these works, the restless drive for experimentation is palpable. Poetic, enigmatic, echoing the experiments of peers such as Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke while retaining an individual signature, Steiner’s abstractions shimmer with a contemporary charge, drawing deeply on decades of artistic research.

What, then, unites this dizzying range? Ultimately, it is Steiner’s devotion to art as a zone of possibility—his belief that painting, video, installation, and archive are not isolated pursuits, but stages of an ongoing conversation about perception, action, and the transformation of reality through artistic labor. In this, his archiving impulse—seen in the stewardship and eventual gifting of his entire video collection to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz—offers another legacy: he not only created, but ensured the continued accessibility and scholarly engagement with works by artists as diverse as Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Richard Serra, and George Maciunas.

Steiner’s artistic philosophy, as reflected in countless texts and interviews, circled the questions of temporality, authenticity, and the clash between fleeting moment and durable memory. His world is one where documentation itself becomes creation, where each action, whether a painted gesture or a performance, extends the tradition of the avant-garde and brings fresh resonance to the present.

Across several decades and media, Mike Steiner stood for that most vital quality in contemporary art—the will to risk uncertainty, to welcome the unknown, and to foster collaboration. His impact as an initiator, archivist, and tireless experimenter reverberates through the archives of the Hamburger Bahnhof, the studios of Berlin, and the memories of all who encountered his universe.

Why does Mike Steiner’s legacy in contemporary art still matter today? At a moment when the lines between artist, curator, and documentarian are more porous than ever, Steiner emerges as a model of restless curiosity and reinvention. To encounter his painted tapes, his installations, or his collections is to sense the heartbeat of contemporary practice—vivid, unpredictable, and uncompromisingly alive.

For anyone passionate about the history—and the future—of contemporary arts Berlin, to ignore Mike Steiner would be to overlook an indispensable chapter. Those wishing for further immersion should visit the comprehensive portal on his official site, explore the legacy of the Nationalgalerie, or seek out his paintings and video works. Each provides a profound reminder: Steiner’s art still has the power to disrupt, provoke, and inspire.

A selection of images, detailed works, and exhibition histories is available at Mike Steiner’s official artist website.

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