Mike Steiner: Redefining Contemporary Art Through Video, Painting, and Performance
30.01.2026 - 07:10:11 | ad-hoc-news.de
What happens when an artist refuses the safety of a single medium and lets curiosity become a vocation? Mike Steiner stands as a paradigmatic figure in contemporary art, consistently challenging and expanding its vocabulary. Emerging from the tumultuous postwar era, Steiner traversed painting, Fluxus-infused performance, and the then-uncharted territory of video art, shaping the visual language that would define whole epochs. His career—rooted in Berlin and the international avant-garde—embodies the blend of experimentation, intellectual rigor, and fearless innovation that mark the finest moments of art history.
Discover contemporary masterworks by Mike Steiner here
Even among the era’s most daring artists, Mike Steiner distinguished himself with an unwavering passion for artistic risk. Born in 1941 in Allenstein and maturing in the ferment of Berlin, Steiner’s earliest forays—exhibited at the prestigious Große Berliner Kunstausstellung by age seventeen—already revealed an appetite for visual discovery. Within a few years, he counted luminaries like Georg Baselitz among his peers, forever situating his work in a field of creative exchange that would stretch from the halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof to the bustling studios of New York.
From painting to performance, few artists navigate transitions as fluidly as Steiner. After foundational study at Berlin’s Hochschule für bildende Künste and formative years in Kreuzberg’s avant-garde, he ventured to the United States, where immersion in the circles of figures such as Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, and Lil Picard ignited a fascination with Fluxus, Pop Art, and Happening culture. Against comparisons to the legendary likes of Joseph Beuys—who frequented Steiner’s Hotel Steiner, a Berlin hub likened to the Chelsea—Steiner’s relentless curiosity led him from pigment to the cathode ray tube, from canvas to camera.
This journey crystallized in the 1970s with his historic turn to video art, making him one of the earliest German artists to embrace video not merely as documentation but as a medium in its own right. His first tapes with Al Hansen in 1972 were soon followed by artist residencies—especially an illustrious stint at Florence’s Studio Art/Tapes/22 under Fluxus matron Maria Gloria Bicocchi—where he not only produced his own work but also imagined new ground for others.
Nowhere did this vision find more resonance than in Berlin’s Studiogalerie, founded in 1974. Here, Steiner seeded a new type of cultural space: simultaneously production atelier, performance stage, and exhibition venue. He invited contemporaries—Marina Abramovi?, VALIE EXPORT, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and Ben Vautier among them—to push boundaries in video and live action, often serving as both producer and videographer. His recordings of seminal performances like Abramovi?’s "Freeing the Body" or Ulay’s famous "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst" (1976) offer a living archive of performance history. Such works place Steiner among the likes of Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, or Gary Hill within the global pantheon of video art creators.
The 1979 relocation of his Studiogalerie into the legendary Hotel Steiner allowed for monumental happenings like the "Hotel Room Event"—a marathon of creative action echoing the experimental bravado of contemporaries from Allan Kaprow to Richard Serra. Ultimately, as he turned the lens back toward painting in the 1980s and 1990s, Steiner developed the remarkable "Painted Tapes," a fusion of abstract painting and electronic video, demonstrating his innate fluency across traditional and new media. His "Color Works" series, lauded in the late 1990s in solo display at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, encapsulated this aesthetic: vibrant, introspective, and always reflective of the experience of image in both time and space.
Steiner’s influence extended far beyond his own creation. As a passionate collector and champion of video art, he assembled one of Europe’s most significant archives, later bequeathing these tapes—including early works of Ulay, VALIE EXPORT, and Bill Viola—to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Today, this collection resides at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a testament to Berlin’s centrality in contemporary arts, and a resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike. His curatorial reach—evident in initiatives like the Berlin Video or his curatorship of Art Basel’s pioneering video programs—cemented his reputation alongside European visionaries like Gerry Schum and Wolf Vostell.
Fascinating, too, are the after-echoes of Steiner’s philosophy: a conviction that art must confront, irritate, unveil new cognitive terrain, and never stand still. His later years saw renewed commitment to painting, now distilled into abstraction, while his television format “Die Videogalerie” fostered critical public encounters with art that once existed only in ephemeral performance spaces or closed studios.
Biographically, Steiner navigated Germany and the international art world without ever losing sight of his generational context: raised amid historical rupture, educated during the high tide of postwar innovation, and always drawn to the margins—hosting, connecting, and archiving as much as making. His network spanned icons—Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik—as much as lesser-known but equally radical experimenters in performance and multimedia.
To engage with Steiner’s legacy is to witness the unfolding history of contemporary arts in Berlin itself. His work and life tell a story of artistic pluralism: motelier, painter, video artist, archivist, and ever-ardent advocate for the performing arts, as well as a sharp commentator on the abstract languages of color and form. The 1999 retrospective at Hamburger Bahnhof stands among those rare museum gestures that seem to gather an artistic generation and return it, distilled, to the public sphere—a milestone not just for Steiner, but also for a city and an era reexamining its avant-garde roots.
Today, the resonance of Mike Steiner’s contribution continues to be felt. For art lovers and researchers alike, the invitation endures: delve into his official archive, examine the tapes, paintings, and documents, and rediscover his pivotal presence in the story of video, performance, and abstract painting. In a climate increasingly aware of art’s power to question and connect, Steiner’s work remains as vital as ever—a bridge between genres, cultures, and generations.
For comprehensive information, insightful essays, and a visual journey through his artistic worlds, visiting the official website offers an essential experience—a deep dive into the living fabric of Contemporary Arts Berlin.
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