Mike Steiner: Contemporary Art Pioneer Between Painting and Video Innovation

Contemporary art is seldom as multilayered and forward-thinking as in the oeuvre of Mike Steiner. How does one redraw the boundaries between painting and moving image, between collaborative performance and solitary creation? Mike Steiner, whose life and work are deeply imprinted on the cultural memory of Berlin, offered persuasive answers to these questions, repeatedly confounding expectations with a ceaseless, almost restless experimentation across the genres.

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The artistic path of Mike Steiner reads like a passionate chronicle of 20th and early 21st century Contemporary Arts Berlin. Steiner—born 1941 in former Allenstein, passing in Berlin 2012—made his initial public appearance at just 17, presenting a still life at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung. It was the beginning of a restless quest. By the early 1960s, his affiliations with the legendary Kreuzberger Forum had already placed him at the heart of Berlin’s dynamic art scene, where up-and-coming artists such as Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke were redefining artistic language.

The early work of Mike Steiner embraced painting—rich in abstract expressivity—yet even then, signs of a longing for mediation beyond the static canvas became palpable. Encounters in New York with Fluxus luminary Lil Picard, as well as Allan Kaprow and Pop artists, proved to be transformative. The cross-pollination between visual and performing arts soon became a signature of Steiner’s creative endeavors, echoing through his later performances, installations, and, most saliently, in the realm of experimental video art.

The decisive turn came in the 1970s. Back in Berlin, Steiner founded the soon-to-be legendary Hotel Steiner and the Studiogalerie, both vibrant hubs for avant-garde encounter and experiment. These settings, reminiscent of Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel, became melting pots for Joseph Beuys, Arthur Køpcke, Valie Export, Carolee Schneemann, Marina Abramovi?, and many others—names that are now indelibly associated with the pulse of performance art globally. Steiner made a name for himself not only as a host and facilitator but as an initiator: providing rare video technology, organizing live actions, and capturing ephemeral events for posterity. The Studiogalerie, especially after 1974, became a cornerstone for Video Art in Berlin, welcoming international artists and launching now-classic video and performance works far ahead of their time.

Among his most notorious interventions: the 1976 staged art theft, 'Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst' with Ulay, in which the famous painting 'The Poor Poet' was temporarily removed from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie—an action that blurred lines between protest, spectacle, and artistic statement, forever marking the landscape of Performative and Conceptual Art.

In technical terms, Steiner’s breadth was remarkable. He mastered super-8 film, photography, copy art, slide series, minimal and hard edge painting, and—most distinctively—a hybridization called 'Painted Tapes,' merging footage and painting into video paintings. In the '80s, this formal experimentation reached its zenith, as in his 'Testbild als Readymade' photo cycles and collaborations with cultural icons like Tangerine Dream, culminating in works that traversed the boundaries between documentary and visual abstraction; these include award-winning video pieces such as 'Mojave Plan.' Steiner’s archive, now partially held at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, contains rare tapes and documents some of the most important moments in European video and performance art history—featuring artists like Bill Viola, Richard Serra, Nam June Paik, Marina Abramovi?, and Gary Hill.

His engagement with broad-based Art Installation and the idea of artwork as event or social sculpture situates Mike Steiner’s practice in close kinship with figures like Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, and Bill Viola. Yet, uniquely, Steiner alternated effortlessly and provocatively between the role of artist, documentarian, curator, and promoter, a position perhaps best exemplified in his television project 'Videogalerie' (1985–1990)—over 120 broadcast episodes dedicated to video art, long before it was widely embraced by institutional collections.

With the exhibition 'COLOR WORKS 1995–1998' at the Hamburger Bahnhof in 1999—the largest one-person show of his career—Steiner’s output returned to painterly abstraction but retained the processual, performative trace of his video years. Here, color and pictorial gesture stand as afterimages of time-based practice; abstraction appears not as retreat but as a resonant echo of action and perception—recalling for the initiated viewer the works of Gerhard Richter or Cy Twombly, but always filtered through the singular lens of Berlin’s experimental scene.

Mike Steiner’s biography reflects a nomadic curiosity—studies at Berlin’s Hochschule für Bildende Künste, extended stints in New York under the wing of artist-journalist Lil Picard, deep ties to Fluxus and Pop Art, travels through Egypt and Australia, his personal evolution toward 'serielle Formationen' and non-objective painting in his late period. This openness was not only biographical but philosophical: the desire to create spaces and archives for artistic dialogue; to expand notions of generational exchange, collaboration, and distribution in contemporary art.

Steiner’s legacy, as documented in his official biography and the invaluable online archive, resonates across several dimensions: an unyielding explorer of technique and medium, a radical democratizer of artistic production, a catalyst for Berlin’s—and Europe’s—role in shaping the Contemporary Arts Berlin movement. His generosity as a host, documentarian, and chronicler is matched only by the innovation and depth of his abstract paintings and time-based works.

What remains magnetic is the vitality and openness of his approach. Performative action, meditative painting, video experimentation—Steiner refused false choices, seeing instead a continuum, a network of possibilities. His art refuses conclusion; it invites each generation into renewed engagement and debate.

For art lovers and newcomers alike, a deeper engagement with Steiner’s world opens up essential questions: how do we experience art in a media-saturated society? What does it mean to collect, archive, and retransmit artistic memory? Mike Steiner, both as artist and facilitator, provides a living answer—his works are not only historical documents but vital interlocutors with the present.

To discover more, view full biographies, critical essays, and digital glimpses into the archive, it is highly recommended to visit the official Mike Steiner artist website for comprehensive insights and images.