Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer Blurring Boundaries of Painting and Video in Berlin

Mike Steiner revolutionized contemporary art through genre-crossing works that merged painting, video, and performance. Discover how his legacy shapes the Contemporary Arts Berlin landscape to this day.

When entering the universe of Mike Steiner, one is immediately struck by the restless energy animating every facet of his contemporary art. Can the frontier between painting, video, and performance ever truly be fixed? Mike Steiner’s life and work, as documented on his official artist website, give a resounding answer: boundaries are made to be transgressed.

Mike Steiner, born in 1941 in Allenstein, distinguished himself across multiple disciplines: as a painter, a pioneer of video art, a collector, and an indefatigable promoter of the avant-garde. From his earliest forays into the Berlin art world in 1959, Steiner saw himself less as an isolated creator and more as a catalyst for new movements, constantly seeking dialogue between art forms and artists.

His restless curiosity carried him from informel painting on Berlin’s large canvases to the pulsating heart of New York’s 1960s art scene. Here, under the mentorship of Lil Picard, and through encounters with icons like Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, and Robert Motherwell, Mike Steiner absorbed the language of Fluxus, Happening, and Pop Art. These contacts set the course for his later embrace of video and performance, fertile grounds for experimentation that would bear fruit upon his return to Berlin.

The first major milestone – both literally and metaphorically – was the legendary Hotel Steiner, established in 1970 near the Kurfürstendamm. Much like New York’s Chelsea Hotel, this became Berlin’s crucible of Contemporary Arts, a haven for Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke, Peter Hutchinson, and myriad figures seeking creative cross-pollination. It was here that innovation thrived, encouraged by an atmosphere reminiscent of Café Voltaire and the cafés of Weimar-era Berlin, as chronicled by contemporaries.

Yet most compelling was the launch of the Studiogalerie in 1974, a unique forum combining exhibition space, video production studio, and performance stage. Inspired by Maria Gloria Bicocchi’s Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, Mike Steiner supplied Berlin’s art rebels – the likes of the INTERMEDIA group and luminary performance artists Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, Marina Abramovi?, and Jochen Gerz – with state-of-the-art video technology, autonomy, and an audience.

Fascinating, too, is Steiner’s simultaneous evolution from painter struggling with the "crisis of legitimation" of classic media, to one of Germany’s foremost champions of new forms. By the early 1970s, the question was no longer “How to paint?” but rather “How far can art’s language be stretched?” He wrestled against the limits of the static image, leading him into the uncharted territory of video. Collaborations with Fluxus protagonists such as Al Hansen and Allan Kaprow catalyzed a prolific period of genre fusion, including early video works in Florence and Berlin.

Steiner’s reputation as both doer and chronicler of art acts was irrevocably etched when he orchestrated, alongside Ulay in 1976, the headline-grabbing "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst". The artwork – simultaneously a happening, a performance, a media provocation, and a video document – saw Ulay temporarily removing Spitzweg’s "Der arme Poet" from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and placing it in a working-class family’s home in Kreuzberg. This audacious act, captured on video under Steiner’s direction, forever linked him with the radical trajectories of contemporary art and the blurring of artistic and social space.

Equally significant was Steiner’s directorship of the long-running TV format "Videogalerie" from 1985 to 1990. More than 120 broadcasts shed light on Berlin’s and the international scene’s burgeoning video art output, introducing audiences to the likes of Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, George Maciunas, and Marina Abramovi?. This platform echoed the impact of Gerry Schum’s legendary "Fernsehgalerie", and – as documented – became a true conveyor of innovation and a robust archive for the history of video art.

The vastness of Mike Steiner’s artistic media is still remarkable. His output encompasses not only painting and video, but also Super 8 film, photography, copy art, slide series, minimal and hard-edge painting, and groundbreaking hybrid pieces. Of note are the "Painted Tapes" series, in which he fuses video sequences with painterly interventions, as well as photo series such as "Das Testbild als Readymade". From the mid-1990s onward, he returned to abstract painting, emphasizing lush color and geometrical formality.

The largest recognition of his European influence arrived with the 1999 retrospective "COLOR WORKS" at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. This exhibition did not merely catalogue his output but highlighted Steiner’s capacity to link painting and multimedia practice, to be simultaneously art’s historian and visionary. His work stands alongside contemporaries like Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovi?, and Nam June Paik: all artists for whom crossing disciplines is the key to contemporaneity.

Mike Steiner’s place in art history is cemented not only by his own oeuvre, but also by his role as a collector, most notably of video art. His collection, bequeathed in 1999 to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and now housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof, gathers seminal works and early documentation of performance, action, and video works by a who’s-who of international artists. Here, the strands of history, technical innovation, and artistic dialogue are tightly woven.

One cannot help but be fascinated by Steiner’s drive for connection, community, and experiment. His deep involvement in fostering Berlin as a center of Contemporary Arts, as well as his continued work in painting, video, and installation until his final years, makes him a vital reference point for artists and audiences alike. Indeed, his persistent refusal to accept boundaries – between artists, between media, between art and life itself – is perhaps his most enduring artistic statement.

Why does Mike Steiner remain so relevant to contemporary art today? Perhaps because, in an era of increasing specialisation, his work embodies the potency and necessity of cross-disciplinary engagement. As his life and work demonstrate, art that is unafraid to abandon old certainties is forever contemporary. For those eager to dive deeper, the official Mike Steiner website offers an illuminating journey through his art, exhibitions, and lasting influence.

@ ad-hoc-news.de