Mike Steiner: How Contemporary Art Crossed Borders from Paint to Video Revolution

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art by fusing painting, Fluxus, and video like no other. His journey from Berlin avantgarde to the Hamburger Bahnhof legacy is a tale of constant reinvention.

Contemporary art owes some of its boldest breakthroughs to pioneers who crossed established borders, and few did so more intriguingly than Mike Steiner. When standing before Steiner’s works—vivid abstractions, magnetic video installations, or documents of radical performance—one is drawn into a world where the boundaries between painting, moving images, and lived action dissolve. Mike Steiner’s contributions made contemporary art in Berlin a model of ceaseless innovation and provocative boundary-testing. But how do you define a legacy that is at once painterly and electric, ephemeral and enduring?

Mike Steiner’s journey began in turbulent pre-war Allenstein in 1941, but it was postwar Berlin where his artistic identity flourished. An early fascination with film morphed into a love of painting during his school days. At just 17, he participated in the imposing Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, marking an auspicious entrance into the world of visual art. By the early 1960s, Steiner was already rubbing shoulders with artists who would define the postwar era in Germany—Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke among them. His studies at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin anchored him in formal traditions, yet it was the ceaseless search for new media that set his trajectory apart.

The late 1960s and early 1970s signaled a shift for Steiner. While his Informal Painting was gaining attention, a Ford Foundation grant drew him to the United States, where he found himself at the crossroads of New York’s electrifying art scene. There, mentors like Lil Picard introduced him to the vibrating worlds of Fluxus, Happening, and Pop Art. Interactions with Robert Motherwell, Al Hansen, and the legendary Allan Kaprow would shape his fascination for performance and ephemeral art—elements that would resurface soon in his Berlin project.

Back in Berlin, the mythic Hotel Steiner at the Kurfürstendamm became a nucleus of artistic energy and international exchange. It was more than an inn: it was a crucible where Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke, and scores of American and European artists found refuge, inspiration, and camaraderie. The bohemian spirit that permeated the Chelsea Hotel transposed itself into a Berlin key via Mike Steiner’s open-door policy, making the city a new epicenter for contemporary arts. The Hotel’s ambiance is lovingly described as a "home far away from home," and its influence on the Berlin avantgarde cannot be overstated.

Yet it was in the radical embrace of new media that Steiner truly changed the cultural landscape. In 1974, after traveling to Florence on the invitation of Kaprow and working in the renowned Art/Tapes/22 studio, Steiner realized that the future of art was irrevocably hybrid. The doubts gnawing at his faith in painting found release in the raw immediacy of video, leading to the founding of his Studiogalerie—an unprecedented international forum for video and performance arts in Berlin. Here, video equipment was placed in the hands of creators, democratizing a new art form and catalyzing a Berlin scene previously constrained by lack of infrastructure.

Steiner’s Studiogalerie was more than a showcase; it was a production house, a laboratory for Creative Arts where artists collaborated, performed, documented, and transcended boundaries. The roster reads like a who’s who of contemporary experimentation: Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and the rising stars of feminist performance including Marina Abramovi? all traversed its bright, feverish spaces. Steiner not only provided the tech and the stage, but often ran the video camera himself, transforming transient moments into lasting art objects. His documentary of Ulay’s now-legendary "Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst" (1976) went far beyond traditional curatorship—it was active authorship in the dance between action, image, and meaning.

In the context of the global contemporary arts movement, Mike Steiner sits comfortably beside icons like Nam June Paik and Bill Viola, with whom he shared an appetite for technological innovation and spirit of experimentation. However, while Paik is associated with electronic flux and Viola with emotional resonance, Steiner stood out in his total embrace of community-building and interdisciplinary practice—dimensions visible in the international reach of his studios and his dynamic archive.

The 1980s and 1990s brought further evolution. Steiner’s "Painted Tapes" epitomize this shift—hybrids where painting and video are not separate domains but coalesce in vibrant polychrome gestures sampled from electronic signals, photographic collage, and Super 8 film. His documentary works, like the videos made in tandem with Tangerine Dream or the celebrated "Mojave Plan," not only broke technical ground but hinted at a uniquely personal synthesis of music, abstraction, and performance. By the end of the century, abstraction and minimalism—already central to his early painting—found new voice in his late-career canvas works.

Mike Steiner’s impact as a collector offers another pillar of his legacy. Beginning with Reiner Ruthenbeck’s video purchased in 1974, he amassed one of the most significant collections of European and American video art, with works by Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, Bill Viola, and more. In 1999, Steiner’s art tapes—his greatest curatorial gift to future generations—were entrusted to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and found their home at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, marking a milestone both in his biography and Berlin’s art history.

The 1999 retrospective "Color Works" at Hamburger Bahnhof was an acknowledgement of Mike Steiner’s multifaceted output. Never content to rest within a single medium, he returned to painting in the 2000s, producing abstract works and exploring new media, including fabric art. Even after a stroke in 2006 forced him into a more private existence, his output continued with characteristic intensity, and exhibitions into the next decade—such as "Live to Tape" or "AUGENFUTTER BILDERFRESSER"—cemented his posthumous influence.

How might one measure the significance of Mike Steiner for the contemporary art world? His name is inseparable from Berlin’s rise as a global hub for experimental art forms. Yet the enduring power of his work is less about institutional recognition and more about the invitation he extends: to see art as an ever-renewing experiment, to challenge media, to break down barriers between artist, audience, and artifact.

Mike Steiner’s approach to time, space, and color is not mere formalism but an open call for encounter—sometimes disruptive, often poetic, always boundary-defying. To explore his archive is to immerse yourself in the unruly energy of performance, the pulse of Contemporary Arts Berlin, and the global legacy he helped forge. For anyone passionate about the history and future of abstract paintings, performance, or video installations, the oeuvre of Mike Steiner rewards a closer look, its richness undiminished by time.

Many of Steiner’s most important documents and works are preserved, yet not all are publicly accessible. Still, his enduring influence runs through every facet of contemporary arts, from video installations in international biennials to the activating spirit of new artist-run spaces today. Those seeking more about his intricate world should visit the official Mike Steiner website for detailed texts, exhibitions, and archival glimpses ????.