Snakeoil tattoo

The title points to a print engaging with tattoo iconography—likely a serpent rendered in the bold linework of the irezumi tradition, paired or labeled with the English phrase "snake oil," the colloquialism for fraudulent panaceas. Kristensen juxtaposes the venerable Japanese tattoo lineage—historically intertwined with [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) through Kuniyoshi's heroes of the Suikoden—with the language of mass-market quackery, generating his characteristic ironic register. As mokuhanga, the print depends on multiple carved blocks printed in registration on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi), the keyblock supplying linear scaffolding while color blocks layer flat or graded fields. The serpentine subject offers natural opportunities for [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), the gradient inking technique applied with a damp brush and [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure to suggest the luster of scales. In Kristensen's broader practice, the piece sits alongside his Tokyo Tower variants and pop-culture interventions: a Danish-born printmaker treating Edo-rooted craft as a vehicle for cross-cultural commentary rather than as an object of preservation. The work belongs to a strand of contemporary mokuhanga that prizes irreverent subject matter while maintaining the technical demands of hand-printing on paper.