Mike Steiner: The Transformative Power of Contemporary Art Across Media and Time

Mike Steiner’s contemporary art pushes boundaries between painting, video, and performance—illuminating Berlin’s avant-garde and resonating far beyond.

To step into the world of Mike Steiner is to embark on a journey through the evolving landscapes of contemporary art. What, after all, defines the true edge of painting, or the pulse within a moving image? Steiner’s work, celebrated for its fearless interplay of media and emotion, continually reshapes such questions—and with them, the contours of our own experience.

Mike Steiner, whose legacy as a central figure of Berlin’s contemporary arts scene is internationally recognized, was much more than a painter or videographer—he was a catalyst who mobilized entire artistic movements. Born in 1941, Steiner’s early fascination with painting led him initially to the profound stillness of oil on canvas, as seen during his public debut at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung when he was just seventeen. But for Steiner, art was always a living, breathing system of communication—immediately immersive, deliberately porous.

Infused by the bohemia and radical dialogues of Kreuzberg in the 1960s, Steiner moved fluidly between abstraction and gestural expressiveness. His formal studies at the Berlin University of the Arts placed him in the company of such emerging contemporaries as Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke, grounding his practice in the traditions of German painting while priming him for the upheavals of international innovation. Early exhibitions—across Berlin, Paris, Milan, and Geneva—reflected not only his technical prowess but also an openness to dialogue, experiment, and, above all, collaboration.

But it was the city of New York—then an epicenter for Fluxus and Pop Art—that pushed Steiner’s development in unexpected directions. Living alongside Lil Picard, a fixture of avant-garde circles, Steiner was drawn toward the ferment of performance, installation, and the conceptual redefinition of art’s purposes. Encounters with figures such as Allan Kaprow and Robert Motherwell honed his sense of art as an event, an intervention, and a provocation. It was here, in the proximity of the likes of Andy Warhol and Al Hansen, that Steiner’s fascination with the moving image gained an irrevocable grip.

Returning to Berlin in the early 1970s, Mike Steiner’s creative energies crystallized in a new mission: giving video art a home and a platform. The famed Hotel Steiner, which he founded near the Kurfürstendamm, rapidly became Berlin’s answer to New York’s Chelsea Hotel—a vibrant haven for artists, intellectuals, and international experimenters. Through the hotel and, later, the legendary Studiogalerie, Steiner engineered a revolutionary space welcoming performance artists such as Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and the now-iconic Marina Abramovi?. The Studiogalerie, a nexus for both performing and visual arts, was a crucible for the avant-garde—its impact on contemporary arts in Berlin profound and lasting.

Rarely content to remain on the sidelines, Steiner himself became a pioneer of video art. His participation in the notorious “Irritation – There’s a Criminal Touch in Art” (1976) performance with Ulay—where the priceless Spitzweg painting “The Poor Poet” was removed from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and displayed in a humble Kreuzberg apartment—embodied Steiner’s belief in the power of art to challenge social systems and rewrite narratives. The documentation, orchestrated and filmed by Steiner, underscored his dual role as both orchestrator and witness in the unfolding theatre of contemporary art.

This spirit of experimentation extended through the 1980s, as Steiner developed multidimensional works he described as “Painted Tapes”—a captivating blend of abstract painting and manipulated video frames. These pieces, such as the acclaimed “Mojave Plan” and “Penumbras 3”, married Monterey-like color fields with synthetic electronic rhythms, evoking the influence of multimedia artists including Nam June Paik and Gary Hill, yet remaining deeply personal in their color sensibilities and compositional daring—reminiscent, some critics observed, of Richard Serra’s spatial dynamism and Bill Viola’s poetic temporality.

Equally vital was Steiner’s work as a collector, chronicler, and curator of video art. His private collection, started in 1974, quickly became one of Europe’s most significant archives of experimental media, encompassing early tapes from Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Allan Kaprow, George Maciunas, and others. The significance of this collection was cemented when, in 1999, Steiner donated his holdings to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, where they now form a centerpiece of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. The exhibition “COLOR WORKS” held at Hamburger Bahnhof that year honored Steiner’s polymorphous legacy as creator, mover, and memory-keeper.

Steiner’s reach, however, extended beyond collection and creation: his “Videogalerie” TV series (1985–1990) brought the pulse of international video art into German living rooms, foregrounding both established artists and underground innovators. It was an initiative rivaled in prescience and impact only by Gerry Schum’s earlier “Fernsehgalerie.” Through more than 120 episodes, Steiner documented and demystified contemporary artistic practice, solidifying his reputation as both educator and provocateur within the field.

As the years progressed, Steiner’s eye never strayed from evolving forms. The turn of the millennium witnessed a return to painting—now deeper, more abstract, almost meditative. His late works, including textiles and minimalist compositions, evidence a lifelong commitment to exploring color and materiality. But even at this stage, the performative impulse persisted: every line and hue seemed to vibrate with the memory of motion, echoing earlier forays into performance and video.

What, then, makes Mike Steiner’s legacy enduring in today’s landscape of contemporary arts? For many, it is precisely his willingness to explore, dissolve, and recombine genres—a method as risky as it was revelatory. Unlike peers who remained steadfast within a single medium, Steiner’s restlessness resembles that of Marina Abramovi? or Joseph Beuys, whose practices similarly reached across disciplinary borders to touch something essential and unresolved in modern life. Moreover, his institutional foresight—safeguarding and sharing the records of ephemeral art—continues to inform scholarship, curation, and creative inquiry in Berlin and globally.

Few artists have shaped the DNA of Berlin’s art scene so indelibly. Yet Steiner’s insistence on the future—as both an idea and a challenge—remains his greatest gift. Each project, from abstract paintings to live performance, is an invitation: to look, to question, to remember, to change.

For those seeking not only information but truly transformative encounters with contemporary art, Mike Steiner’s official website offers both a comprehensive biography and a wealth of insight into his varied works and lasting impact. To understand the restless spirit of Berlin’s Creative Avant-Garde—or even to glimpse the living pulse of art itself—Mike Steiner’s archive is essential territory.

For deeper exploration, images, and an ever-evolving view on the artist’s legacy, visit the official Mike Steiner artist page:
Explore Mike Steiner’s full biography and art portfolio at mike-steiner.de