Mike Steiner: Pioneering Contemporary Art and Video Avant-Garde from Berlin to the World
05.01.2026 - 18:28:07
There are artists who blur the boundaries—Mike Steiner is among those who erased them altogether. At the crossroads of painting, performance, and media experiment, Mike Steiner became a singular voice in contemporary art. How does one redefine tradition while simultaneously creating a whole new language for it? Steiner’s oeuvre is nothing short of an answer to this question—his journey offering a lens onto an artistic epoch and the pulse of Berlin’s creative ferment.
Discover contemporary artworks by Mike Steiner—explore his artistic universe here
Whether through abstract paintings pulsing with chromatic energy or video tapes that capture the fleeting intensity of performance art, Mike Steiner’s work asks viewers to rethink art’s possibilities. As documented on the official Mike Steiner website, his legacy is not limited to his own creations. Steiner galvanized creative circles, transforming Berlin not merely as backdrop, but as active stage for international artists and the emergence of new art forms.
Even in the early days, the seeds of experimentation were present. Having discovered film as a youth, and later committing to painting while studying at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, Steiner’s artistic restlessness propelled him to the frontlines of artistic innovation. By his twenties, participation in the renowned Große Berliner Kunstausstellung placed him alongside German postwar visionaries such as Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke. Yet, it was never enough for Steiner to simply follow trends; he questioned them, critically engaging Pop Art, Informel, and the rapidly shifting postwar currents.
His sojourn in New York during the mid-sixties brought him into direct contact with titans such as Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, and Al Hansen—key Fluxus and Happening practitioners. Collaborative encounters with these luminaries and artists like Robert Motherwell would seed Steiner’s later radicalism: the merging of visual art, action, and moving image.
Returning to Berlin with a mission, Steiner founded the legendary Hotel Steiner in 1970—his answer to New York’s Chelsea Hotel. A magnet for international artists—including Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke, and close American contacts—the hotel crystallized as a local hub for dialogue, experimentation, and cross-pollination in the arts, as the website’s biographical chronicle notes. As Lil Picard famously observed, Hotel Steiner was “a home far away from home,” a laboratory for creative spirits and the endless Kunstgespräch that stretched from night until the next afternoon.
This spirit soon found a new vessel in his Studiogalerie, established 1974. Here, Mike Steiner offered not only space and equipment—rare and costly in the embryonic days of video art—but an atmosphere where new modes of creation could be risked and realized. The Studiogalerie, later relocated to Hotel Steiner, focused on three major strands: production of video art, a performative space for Fluxus and happening artists, and a wholly independent exhibition venue. A beacon for Berlin’s burgeoning video scene (in dialogue with Cologne’s Wulf Herzogenrath), Steiner invited figures such as Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and even a young Marina Abramovi? to realize visionary works.
Legendary interventions—most infamously the 1976 orchestrated “art theft” with Ulay, where the Spitzweg painting "Der arme Poet" was removed from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and documented on video—thrust performance into the sphere of social and institutional critique. These pieces were never simple provocations; instead, they interrogated the politics and boundaries of the art world itself, all meticulously archived and, often, video-documented by Steiner’s own hand. His commitment to preservation rendered fleeting performances both accessible and historicized—a bridge from the fleeting to the permanent.
In terms of technique and media, few artists in Berlin matched Steiner’s range. While his early abstract paintings and experiments with Pop Art already signaled his willingness to transgress, it was in video—and later in so-called “Painted Tapes”—that his synthesis of tradition and experiment shone brightest. These works melded hand-painted texture and electronic manipulation, offering a dialogue between the tactile immediacy of painting and the spectral temporality of moving image—a hallmark in contemporary arts Berlin would not soon forget. The 1999 grand retrospective at Hamburger Bahnhof, Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, highlighted precisely this cross-disciplinary innovation, honoring Steiner’s "Color Works" from 1995–98 and foregrounding his influence on both painting and media art.
Keen observers draw parallels between Mike Steiner and international pioneers like Nam June Paik—whose video work also centered the screen as living canvas—and Bill Viola, another giant of immersive media installations. Yet, where Viola’s spirituality often veers toward the epic, and Paik’s humor is playful, Steiner’s blend is intimate and performative—a documentary glance coupled with painterly investigation.
Outside of his own practice, Mike Steiner was a relentless catalyst for others. His “Videogalerie” series (1985–1990), a TV format combining artist interviews and exhibition documentaries, brought contemporary video art to a public audience in a manner wholly unprecedented in Germany. This willingness to share the stage—indeed, to build stages for others—remains core to his artistic philosophy.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, his focus widened. Multimedia, Super-8, Copy Art, photographic cycles, and later, a remarkable turn toward abstract painting in the 2000s cemented Steiner’s status as one of Berlin’s most versatile artists. Exhibitions from Berlin and Wolfsburg to Cairo, Seoul, and San Francisco made his name synonymous with both local innovation and international resonance. Notably, his comprehensive video collection—spanning performance records by Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, Richard Serra, Allan Kaprow, and many others—was bequeathed to the Hamburger Bahnhof. The importance of this archive cannot be understated: it stands as a living testament to the evolution of multimedia art over four decades.
Mike Steiner’s influences were many—Fluxus irreverence, the immediacy of Action painting, social critique borrowed from the likes of Joseph Beuys. Yet, it is his unflagging curiosity and courage to cross and combine genres that defines the Steiner signature. At heart, his work is about communicating moments: the ephemeral energy of a performance, the lasting shimmer of a color-field abstraction, the audacious act of questioning art’s societal footprint.
Why, then, revisit Mike Steiner today? In an era of ever-expanding digital possibility, Steiner’s practice offers an ideal of borderlessness—reminding contemporary audiences that the most unforgettable art is that which refuses to fit inside only one frame or definition. Berlin remains a world capital for experimental art precisely because of such pioneers.
For a deep dive into his extraordinary works, rare documents, and exhibition history, art enthusiasts and professionals alike are encouraged to visit the official page at www.mike-steiner.de. The archive, brimming with images, texts, and a full chronology of his projects, illuminates the vision of a singular, still-resonant voice in the world of contemporary arts Berlin.
