Mike Spike Froidl

Michael “Mike Spike” Froidl was born on December 17, 1964 in Regen, Bavarian Forest, and is a German visual artist, film and book author.

Froidl grew up in Munich from 1970. From 1985 to 1991, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Robin “Bluebeard” Page, who made him a master student. From 1994 to 1997, Froidl was an assistant in Page’s class. At the same time, he received lessons in Far Eastern calligraphy from the Zen monk K. Kuwahara from 1990 to 1998.

Even as a child in the 1970s, Froidl was influenced by comic culture and the works of old masters such as Albrecht Dürer. He even had several Dürer motifs tattooed on large areas. His artistic development was also inspired by modern artists such as Toulouse Lautrec and Egon Schiele.

From the mid-1980s, Froidl was actively involved in the Munich punk scene. In 1986, he founded the action and performance group “Flexheadorden”, from which film and photographic works emerged. He also began training in martial arts, which later led him to championships in Philippine Modern Arnis and Japanese Aikido.

A significant event in his career was the performance in Spain in 1992, where he was given the nickname “Don Chaos”. As a modern Don Quixote, he traveled through Spain for weeks and documented his experiences in films, photos and drawings.

After studying calligraphy with Zen monk Kuwahara from the mid-1990s, Asian pictorial elements and compositional concepts increasingly flowed into Froidl’s painting.

In 1997, Froidl traveled to China and shot the film “Don Chaos-Tse” there. In the same year, he published his book “Pogo-Do – the Way of Combat Dance”.

Since moving to Berlin in 1998, Froidl has exclusively painted scroll paintings in the Japanese Kakemono style. His works combine Far Eastern and Western painting techniques and often carry political or socio-critical messages.

Froidl’s art was confiscated by the Bavarian police at Corso Leopold in 2005 for allegedly spreading pornography, but was later recognized as art. In 2013, the 84 GHz cultural project, in which Froidl was involved, was awarded the Schwabing Art Prize.

With picture series such as “Climate Change”, “Fukushima” and “Fortress Europe”, Mike Spike Froidl reacts to current political and social changes and upheavals.