Mike Steiner: The Vanguard of Contemporary Art and Videokunst from Berlin to the Hamburger Bahnhof

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art with his multimedia innovations and pioneering spirit. Discover how his legacy bridges painting and videokunst, leaving a lasting mark on the international art scene.

To step into the world of Mike Steiner is to enter an evolving landscape of contemporary art, a place where visual boundaries dissolve and the pulse of experimentation never quite fades. Steiner's name is synonymous with both bold abstraction and the radical frontiers of videokunst. But what truly defines artistic innovation in an era teeming with movements and media? Perhaps it is the vocation to constantly disrupt, question and renew – an ethos embodied uniquely by Mike Steiner.

At the core of Mike Steiner's journey lies a relentless curiosity, an urge to understand the zeitgeist by weaving together the expressive power of abstract paintings, performance, and video. Emerging in the Berlin art world during the late 1950s, Steiner’s early paintings already signaled a departure from conventional forms, gravitating towards pop art and the informel. His youthful contribution to the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung and involvement in the vibrant Kreuzberger Bohème marked him as an influential voice from the outset.

Yet it was Steiner’s sojourn in New York, a melting pot of artistic innovation, that truly set him on an international trajectory. Introduced to the likes of Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, and Robert Motherwell, he discovered the burgeoning worlds of Fluxus, happenings, and experimental film—contexts that would profoundly inflect his later work. This dynamic milieu seeded Steiner’s passion for multimedia art and served as a springboard for collaborations and lifelong influences.

Returning to Berlin, he soon became a linchpin of the city’s contemporary arts movement. His legendary Hotel Steiner and subsequently the Studiogalerie in the early 1970s became magnets for international artists—a European answer to New York's Chelsea Hotel, frequented by the likes of Joseph Beuys and Arthur Køpcke. The Studiogalerie, above all, was a crucible for experimental practice in performing arts, video, and installation, fostering encounters between German, American, and global avant-garde.

Mike Steiner’s early encounter with video technology would prove decisive. Inspired by the potential of video to capture, disturb, and preserve ephemeral happenings, Steiner shifted ever deeper into the realms of time-based art. From 1974 onward, his pioneering role in Berlin’s video art scene was indisputable: the Studiogalerie became a hub for production and exhibition, enabling international artists to experiment with new electronic media. Notably, Mike Steiner gave seminal space to performance icons like Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, and Jochen Gerz—documenting actions, festivals, and interventions in a manner that would become foundational for the medium's history.

No discussion of Mike Steiner can omit the infamous 1976 performance with Ulay: the staged 'theft' of Spitzweg’s "Der arme Poet" from the Neue Nationalgalerie, documented for posterity as both protest and parable—a striking reminder of Steiner’s penchant for blending art, activism, and documentation. His camera transformed fleeting gestures into enduring contemporary art archives, a service to Berlin's cultural memory and to performance art history at large.

In the following decades, Steiner’s influence only grew. With his “Videogalerie” TV format, he brought experimental media into German homes from 1985 to 1990, producing over 120 episodes—a rare fusion of curatorial vision and grassroots art education. Around this time, he also deepened his engagement with painted abstraction, producing strikingly vivid series that dialogued with his work in video. “Painted Tapes”, as he called his fusion of analog and electronic gestures, stand testament to Steiner’s restless pursuit of hybrid forms. His vibrant abstract paintings from the 1990s onwards are marked by bold chromatic experiments, distilling electronic energy into pigment and gesture.

Perhaps the pinnacle of his recognition came in 1999, when Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart hosted his major solo exhibition “COLOR WORKS 1995-1998”, celebrating not just his paintings, but Steiner’s vision as a forerunner of Contemporary Arts Berlin. The show positioned him in dialogue with icons like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke—yet Steiner’s distinct legacy lies in mediation between disciplines, not mere stylistic innovations.

Comparisons may be drawn to Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Gary Hill: all artists who pushed the limits of contemporary art by integrating new media and theory. While Paik is often called the ‘father of video art’, Steiner’s work complements this narrative from a German perspective. His savvy in both fostering and archiving performance and video cements his role in the history of performing arts and installation in ways few others achieved.

The diversity and depth of Mike Steiner’s archive—eventually bequeathed to the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage and now housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof—attests to a lifetime spent at art’s vanguard. The “Berlin Video” series and the artisanal collections gathered since the 1970s capture not only Steiner’s own evolution, but that of a period when art and technology marched together into the unknown.

What shaped Mike Steiner’s artistic philosophy? Above all, an unyielding belief in art as a living, social process. For Steiner, the studio was as important as the gallery; dialogue, experiment, and provisional communities as vital as any finished canvas or tape. His championing of Fluxus ideals—the democratization of art, the dissolving of barriers between genres and audiences—inspired generations. Steiner’s openness to accident, process, and critique remains exemplary, as does his embrace of both high color and conceptual clarity. In his later years, abstraction and collage became principal obsessions, evolving in the quiet of his Berlin studio even as public life receded after illness in 2006.

The resonance of Mike Steiner’s work is not confined to one movement, one era, or one city. The themes he explored—media hybridity, performativity, time, materiality—are foundational to contemporary art today. At the boundary between visual art, installation, and time-based media, Steiner continues to inspire scholars and artists alike to this day.

For those curious to delve further into the kinetic legacy of Mike Steiner, a visit to his official artist website offers extensive biographical and archival materials. There, visitors can immerse themselves in images, texts, and critical reflections that reveal the layers and trajectories of this remarkable artistic life.

In the end, what makes Mike Steiner’s oeuvre for the contemporary arts so enduringly relevant? It is, perhaps, the courage to champion risk, to reimagine the possible, and to insist that art's true arena is always unfolding. Mike Steiner’s works invite us to see, to question, to participate—in short, to experience art not as product, but as living process and continuous rediscovery.