Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art at the Intersection of Video, Performance and Painting

Few names in contemporary art reverberate with the multifaceted legacy of Mike Steiner. His life's work, as chronicled on the official Mike Steiner website, reveals an extraordinary journey bridging painting, video, and performance art. But how does such an artist forge new definitions on the dividing line between media? Mike Steiner’s oeuvre compels us to ask not only what art is, but what it can become when all boundaries are in flux.

Discover contemporary artistic works by Mike Steiner here – see, feel, and engage

At the heart of Mike Steiner’s enduring impact is a restless experimentation that unfolded across several decades. His early forays into abstract painting captivated Berlin’s cultural elite as early as his teens. Not yet twenty, Steiner debuted at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, hinting even then at instincts toward open-ended art forms. Yet, painting was never a settled territory for him—in fact, his later career would critique its very premise, channeling creative energies into entirely new media.

The 1970s marked a decisive turn. As Berlin pulsed with the energies of Fluxus, performance and conceptual art, Steiner charted creative territory few had dared. His legendary Hotel Steiner—often likened to the Chelsea Hotel in New York—became a crucible of artistic turbulence, regularly hosting artists such as Joseph Beuys, Valie Export, Marina Abramovi?, and Allan Kaprow. Through such encounters, Steiner absorbed global influences and, crucially, was swept up by New York’s experimental tides, frequenting the studio of Robert Motherwell and befriending Pop and Happening icons.

It was here, amid burgeoning scenes and radical exchange, that video art became Steiner’s emancipatory vehicle. Few in Germany understood the technical or conceptual affordances of video as Steiner did: 1974 saw him founding the Berlin Studiogalerie, supplying not only a stage for performances but the latest in video setups. He collaborated—sometimes as videographer, sometimes as provocateur—with luminaries like Ulay and Carolee Schneemann. The daring “Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst” performance, orchestrated alongside Ulay, sees Steiner producing the video documentation for a simulated art theft from the Neue Nationalgalerie—a legendary blending of action, critique and visual record.

What makes this body of work so compelling for Contemporary Arts Berlin is its total refusal of boundaries. As opposed to the painterly rigor of contemporaries like Georg Baselitz or the anatomical directness of Marina Abramovi?, Steiner’s practice lived in hybrid space—where happenings were recorded, manipulated, and turned into art objects themselves. There is, in his oeuvre, a radical democratic impulse: video became both archive and artwork, performance both history and ongoing event.

Indeed, Steiner’s Painted Tapes typify this fusion—here, in a transformative gesture, he melded video sequences with painterly interventions, forging a conversation between moving image and brushstroke. Summoning the traditions of abstract paintings but rerouting them through electronica, these works echo the experimental gestures of Bill Viola and Nam June Paik yet remain distinct in their Berlin-centric subjectivity and tactile immediacy.

His commitment to collaboration and documentation extended outward. The renowned Videogalerie TV format (1985–1990), produced and moderated by Steiner himself, brought over 120 televised explorations of international video art into German living rooms—decades before streaming made such access routine. Drawing not only on his curatorial prowess but also on his own growing collection, the format mirrored the pioneering spirit of Gerry Schum’s Fernsehgalerie and made Berlin a European epicenter for contemporary video discourse.

A critical milestone in Steiner’s career was the major solo exhibition in 1999 at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. This exhibition, 'Color Works', paid tribute to his interdisciplinary practice—highlighting both the painterly sensibility that always underscored his video work and his lifelong commitment to contemporary innovation. Today, the Hamburger Bahnhof houses the Mike Steiner collection, including formative videos featuring Ulay, Abramovi?, Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, and even Joseph Beuys. The depth and breadth of this ensemble secure Steiner’s place among the vanguard of post-war avantgarde: alongside figures like Allan Kaprow and Gary Hill, he stands as both creator and chronicler of shifting artistic paradigms.

But to view Mike Steiner solely as videographer or collector would flatten his project. His trajectory from early abstract expression to cross-genre installation mirrors the historical trajectory of contemporary art itself: restless, adaptive, irreducible to system or slogan. His fascination with performance, his links to Fluxus (recalling not only Maciunas but also Dorothy Iannone), and his serial experimentation with photography, Super-8, copy art, and spatial installations, point toward a philosophy of perpetual motion and media permeability. Against the backdrop of artists like Richard Serra and George Maciunas, Steiner’s radical openness to chance, flux, and collaboration marks him as a pivotal force within both German and international contemporary practice.

Even as health challenges prompted withdrawal from public life after 2006, Mike Steiner’s late work testified to unbroken curiosity. The turn toward abstract paintings and textile works in his Berlin atelier evidenced an artist always in search of the next frontier. His archive and legacy—painstakingly preserved and now largely with the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz—remain essential resources for artists, curators, and scholars globally.

What, then, can contemporary audiences take from Mike Steiner today? More than a record of exhibitions or a cabinet of media artifacts, his legacy is a living challenge: to pursue artistic vision beyond convention; to see every boundary as an invitation. Whether you encounter his installations at Hamburger Bahnhof, witness a video manifesto from his Studiogalerie period, or meditate on an enigmatic field of color, Steiner’s work invites us to risk uncertainty—and thus, to discover the new.

For a deeper exploration of his biography, major works, and unique contribution to Contemporary Arts Berlin, the artist’s official archive remains the definitive portal. The restless energy of Mike Steiner, his collective ethos, and persistent innovation are inscribed there in every record, waiting to unfold anew for today’s engaged viewer.

Visit the official Mike Steiner website for original works, insights, and the ongoing resonance of a radical artistic life.