Mike Steiner: Visionary of Contemporary Art and Pioneer of Videokunst in Berlin

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art in Berlin as a trailblazer of video art, performance, and abstract painting. His creative legacy continues to define and challenge the boundaries of the contemporary arts.

Contemporary art is often described as a dance on the edge of the possible. Few names capture this restless spirit like Mike Steiner. From the very first encounter with his oeuvre, viewers are drawn into worlds where media, performance, and abstraction continually seek new forms. But how does one redefine the boundaries between painting and moving image? This very question pulses through the work of Mike Steiner—a question that has made his name synonymous with Berlin’s avant-garde and the global story of contemporary arts.

Few artists managed to combine such a dazzling spectrum of expressive forms. Mike Steiner’s creative path spans exuberant abstract paintings, revolutionary performance art, and a near-obsessive devotion to video installations—a relentless search, always in dialogue with contemporaries who would shape entire epochs. Coming of age in postwar West Berlin, Steiner debuted as one of the youngest artists at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung at just 17, foreshadowing a restless career that would place him at the heart of contemporary arts in Berlin and far beyond.

His early years were marked by a deep engagement with both painting and film. Studying under Hans Kuhn and Hans Jaenisch at the prestigious Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste Berlin, Mike Steiner initially focused on painting, soon shifting toward abstract tendencies. His knack for absorbing new impulses was enriched by formative experiences in New York, where he immersed himself in the scenes surrounding Lil Picard, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, Robert Motherwell, and others. This network would crystallize in his later Berlin days: as founder of Hotel Steiner and the groundbreaking Studiogalerie, he created rare open spaces for artists like Joseph Beuys, Valie Export, and Marina Abramovi?. These Berlin venues became legendary sites of cross-pollination—a German echo of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Hotel.

The early 1970s marked a crucial phase in Mike Steiner’s career. Encountering the rapidly evolving realms of performance and the moving image, Steiner pivoted from traditional painting toward experimentation with film, Super-8, and video. The international spirit of Fluxus, Happening, and Performance Art deeply impacted him, leading to collaborations with key figures such as Al Hansen and Allan Kaprow, and directly influencing works that would become milestones of Berlin’s contemporary arts scene.

His 1974 trip to Florence to work at Maria Gloria Bicocchi’s Art/Tapes/22 studio marked his definitive turn towards videokunst. Fascinated by the creative freedom and immediacy of video as a medium, he founded his Studiogalerie in Berlin’s Ludwigkirchstraße, modeling it after those pioneering Italian spaces. Here, Mike Steiner didn’t just produce his own art—he empowered an entire community, providing access to precious video equipment for experimental artists and offering a platform for performances otherwise destined to vanish into the ether. It is telling that his Studiogalerie hosted actions by artists such as Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, Carolee Schneemann, and Ulay, as well as performances by feminist and international avant-garde figures—captured for posterity through Steiner’s own lens.

Mike Steiner’s role as documentarian and instigator became unmistakable in projects like the infamous „Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst“ (1976) with Ulay, where art, activism, and spectacle achieved an electric synthesis. His performances—often as both organizer and cameraman—transcended mere documentation and became events in themselves, helping establish the Hamburger Bahnhof and its collection as a central site for Berlin’s contemporary art. His 1999 solo exhibition „COLOR WORKS“ at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, remains a landmark, presenting Steiner’s interplay of abstraction and technology on an unprecedented scale.

Steiner’s multimedia explorations set him apart from contemporaries such as Nam June Paik, Gary Hill, and Bill Viola—two of whom, along with icons like Richard Serra, George Maciunas, and Jochen Gerz, also appear in his extensive video collection. Yet where Paik foregrounded a playful electronics-infused aesthetic, Steiner’s approach was more archival, documentary, and—paradoxically—deeply painterly, even when wielding a video camera. His „Painted Tapes“ series fuses the strictness of hard-edge abstraction with the fleeting qualities of electronic imagery, showing a ceaseless desire to fuse painting and time-based media, exploring the grey zones between static and moving images.

Unlike many of his peers, Mike Steiner was not satisfied with solo authorship. His dedication to archiving was revolutionary: with a collector’s eye, he amassed one of the most extensive collections of video art from the 1970s and 80s. Comprehensive pieces by Ulay, Marina Abramovi?, Valie Export, and many others now reside as treasures within the Hamburger Bahnhof, their preservation due in no small part to Steiner’s foresight. In the late 1980s, his televised „Videogalerie“ brought contemporary arts and artists directly into people’s homes, anticipating formats now taken for granted in public broadcasting and online curation alike.

Yet his return to painting after years of engagement with technology signals Steiner’s unique cyclicality. In his later years, abstract painting became a refuge—an intensely personal field of experimentation and meditation. His final works, as seen in exhibitions at DNA Galerie Berlin and the Galvano Art Gallery Leipzig, reveal a clarity of form and color that echo his decades-long dance between technology and touch.

Mike Steiner’s biography interweaves the history of contemporary art in Berlin, his legacy extending through teaching, curation, and an infectious curiosity that never waned. He belonged to those rare artists who not only pushed mediums to their limits but also built communities, archives, and bridges between genres. His close ties to artists like Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, and even the group Tangerine Dream underline how fluid the borders between visual art, performance, and music can be when approached with openness and rigor.

The importance of Mike Steiner’s work for contemporary art and artists cannot be overstated. His pioneering role in blending painting, video, and performance changed how art could be produced, shared, and preserved. The fact that large parts of his video archive remain inaccessible—awaiting digitization—serves as both a provocation and an invitation: how much of art history’s living memory still sits in the dark, its potential yet to be rediscovered?

For anyone intrigued by the relentless innovation and collaborative ethos at the heart of Berlin’s contemporary arts scene—from the Hamburger Bahnhof to today’s project spaces—Mike Steiner’s work remains a beacon. Discover more about his life, see key paintings, installations, and his invaluable video collection at www.mike-steiner.de.