Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art between Performance, Video, and Abstraction

There are artists whose work radiates far beyond the frame of their canvases—or in Mike Steiner’s case, far beyond the flickering edge of the video screen. Mike Steiner, synonymous with contemporary art in Germany, is more than just an artist: he is a phenomenon at the crossroads of painting, performance, and avant-garde media. His career reads like a living history of artistic invention, oscillating between brushstroke and camera lens, always with an uncompromising curiosity for the new.

What does it mean to reinvent art by crossing the forbidden lines between painting and performance, between the static and the moving image? Mike Steiner’s legacy offers an answer—one that is as inspiring as it is challenging. Few artists have left such a poetic and radical mark on Contemporary Arts Berlin and the international scene.

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To understand Mike Steiner’s significance, one must trace his artistic evolution. Born in East Prussia in 1941 and rooted in Berlin's ever-shifting urban landscape, Steiner was shaped early on by modernity’s fragmentation. His first steps were in painting, earning acclaim as a very young artist at the renowned Große Berliner Kunstausstellung in 1959. But even then, there were hints of a restless mind—one seeking more than the limits of oil and canvas. This early abstraction would become the simmering source for later pictorial innovation, culminating decades later in his large-format works celebrated at Hamburger Bahnhof’s famed 1999 exhibition, 'COLOR WORKS'.

Yet, painting was never enough for Mike Steiner. The true turning point came in the vibrant New York art scene of the mid-1960s, where he encountered not just the grand masters of hard-edge abstraction like Robert Motherwell, but revolutionaries of performative and experimental art. Introduced by his close friend Lil Picard—herself a pivotal figure in the intermingling worlds of Fluxus and Pop Art—Steiner mingled with Allan Kaprow, architect of the 'Happening', and Al Hansen. These interactions did more than influence his style; they fundamentally altered his idea of what art could be.

Back in Berlin, Steiner poured his energy and vision into two now-legendary spaces: Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie. The first became a mythic gathering place, likened to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, for artists including Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke, and an international cast of avant-gardists. The Studiogalerie, founded in 1974, turned Berlin into a crucial hub for cutting-edge video and performance art. Here, Steiner not only provided physical and technical resources—mirroring Florence’s studio Art/Tapes/22—but also cultivated an ethos of radical experimentation. He equipped rising stars and icons alike with video cameras, tearing down old barriers between artist, curator, and patron.

It was this commitment to intermedia practice that positioned Mike Steiner at the forefront of European video art. His own works from the 1970s, influenced by collaborations with Marina Abramovi?, Ulay, Valie Export, Jochen Gerz, and Carolee Schneemann, are now legendary. Performances like 'Freeing the Body' and the infamous Spitzweg-Action with Ulay, for which Steiner masterfully produced and documented, are crucial moments in the annals of performance history. Unlike many, Steiner was there as both facilitator and chronicler, helping ensure these ephemeral moments entered the canon of contemporary art.

Steiner’s work is often compared to international contemporaries such as Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Gary Hill—all represented in the Mike Steiner Collection. Like these figures, Steiner was a pioneer of bridging technology and sensibility. Yet, what sets Mike Steiner apart is his role as a catalyst within the Berlin art community. He didn’t simply create: he enabled, archived, and inspired ongoing dialogue. His vast collection of videotapes, started in the mid-1970s, became a living archive—since 1999 entrusted to Hamburger Bahnhof, where it was showcased in such seminal exhibitions as 'COLOR WORKS' and 'Live to Tape'.

But the arc of Steiner’s career did not end with performance or video. In the 1980s and 90s, he began a reflective return to abstraction. The so-called 'Painted Tapes', hybridizing video imagery and painterly gesture, stand as poetic meditations on time, memory, and perception. Meanwhile, exhibitions from Berlin to San Francisco to Leipzig have radiated the subtle, yet powerful cosmopolitanism at the heart of his art—a cosmopolitanism rooted not in surface aesthetics, but in dialogic experimentation with materials, formats, and meanings.

Mike Steiner also left his mark as a fierce advocate for the mediation and dissemination of contemporary art. His television series 'Videogalerie' (1985–1990) is still hailed as a visionary format: over 120 episodes introduced the German public to new forms of video and performance, predating the digital revolutions of the 21st century. As a lecturer and juror, he shaped the contemporary discourses around performance and moving images, influencing younger generations and nourishing the creative ecosystem of Contemporary Arts Berlin.

Philosophically, Steiner’s approach was always marked by skepticism towards artistic dogma. He famously questioned the sanctity of the traditional art object, embodying a Fluxus-infused conviction that art must remain in motion—both literally and figuratively. At the same time, his work is suffused with a tactile sensuality, a sophisticated dialogue between color, surface, and electronic light. Every painting, every video, every documented performance is an invitation to experience—and to question—what is possible when boundaries are rendered soft, permeable, and dynamic.

The critical acclaim surrounding his exhibitions—especially the pivotal 1999 solo show at Hamburger Bahnhof—testifies to the enduring relevance of his vision. Here, critics, artists, and newcomers alike recognized the persistent energy with which Mike Steiner navigated Pop, Minimal, Performance, and pure abstraction. His journey was not linear, but cyclical: each return to painting was enriched by video; each performance grounded by a painter’s attention to form and color.

Today, Mike Steiner’s legacy lives on—as both a private cosmos and a public resource. His archive, only partially digitized, awaits further discovery. For connoisseurs of contemporary art, his work remains a touchstone for the complexities and joys of experimentation, for the search after the unrepeatable moment in art and life.

Those drawn to contemporary art’s boundary-pushing energy are encouraged to explore the depth, beauty, and radical openness represented on the official Mike Steiner website, where new generations can encounter the full spectrum of his astonishing practice: from opulent abstract paintings to iconic video installations, from pioneering performances to vivid works on paper.

Explore more of Mike Steiner’s biography, key works, and exhibitions here