User:Markytronic
Mark Tauriello ( born 4 July 1987) is a conceptual artist who's work encompasses fashion design, fashion photography, and fine art. His work is greatly influenced by the aesthetics of science fiction and horror films. Though his art is inspired by a cinematic genre that depicts women as victims, often his models reverse the role, making them the "monsters". Taking these ideas, he creates avant-garde concepts with dark overtones and an agressive use of color.
Proud of his New Jersey roots, he still resides in his native state where he finds his inspiration from the industrial landscapes, high tension towers, and his massive VHS horror movie collection at home. At 23 he released his first fashion collection entitled "Winter 2084", made up entirely of found materials. Mark is also popular for his self made lego piece accesories which he often wears to New York Fashion Week when he writes/photographs for NewYorkCool.com
Early Life
Growing up in the dangerous low income neighborhood of Irvington, NJ, Marked lived a colorful life. Due to the gang violence, and hostility against white people that existed in the public schools, Tauriello was put through private school at an early age. The city was so out of control that his family was robbed three times, on top of having multiple cars stolen and muggings. Growing up he attended St.Michaels school in Union NJ, where his creativity and love of horror was not embraced. By the time he was in fifth grade he was over 200 pounds and was often made fun of because of his weight. By seventh grade he weighed 230 pounds. Not intimidated by the bullyism that existed, Tauriello was always quick to fight back and stick up for him self. Often students and faculty accused him of being a satanist because he had pictures of Freddy Krueger and Marilyn Manson on his notebooks. Finally graduating the eighth grade in 2001, Tauriello shed 100 pounds by participating in the Subway Diet and doing Thaibo video work outs. By highschool nobody could recognize him, giving him a fresh new start.
Tauriello attended Roselle Catholic High School all four years of his highschool life. Again, his individuality was always being repressed and frowned upon by school faculty members, mostly because of his desire to express himself through his phyisical appearance. During his highschool years he took his studies seriously due to his desire to attend Drew University where he could get generous tuition discount because of his mothers employment with the university. Outside of school, he would often hang out with the local punks, shortly took up playing electric guitar, and held a job in an office basement during his summers. Towards his late highschool years Mark started to dive into experimental film making and redesigning his clothing, usually making them skin tight with edgy embellishments.
College
In 2005 Tauriello graduated Roselle Catholic and made his goal of getting into Drew University a reality. During his enrollement he earned the spot at the General Manager of the university radio station, WMNJ, for three consecutive years. He also started the schools first fashion club, became a Resident Assisant (often dressing up like a sexy cop when he was on duty), created his own film minor, and finally earning a spot writing for the Drew University Acorn newspaper with his own controversial fashion column. In an article written about him during his senior year entitled "True Drew", students collectively agreed that he didn't let the University's or lifes limitations get in his way. During his senior year Tauriello had to juggle his extracurricular responsabilities, 2 part time jobs, and his Art program while dealing with a bad break up that left him broken an emotionally unstable causing him to seek outside help. His last few months at the university Mark pushed himself to finish his thesis in Art in which he focused on creating avant-garde fashion designs, and photographing them in a high fashion editorial style, breaking new ground for the school's art program. Mark was able to complete his thesis and graduate in 2009 with a BA in Studio Art and a double minor in Art History and Film Production.
Post College/ Work Experiences
After graduating from Drew in 2009, Mark had to rebuild his life. Still depressed over his messy break up with his boyfriend of five years, he had to become a new person in order to move on. Reaching for the top shelf, Tauriello faught to get his way into the fashion world with the help of nobody, armed only with his portfolio and life experiences. Just months after graduating college, Tauriello earned him self a spot writing about designer collections and photographing the runways during Fashion Week for the online publication, New York Cool, which he still does today. His experiences also include interning for fashion designer Stella Zotis, famous for being a contestant on Project Runway season 5, and interning for Kate Ryan Inc. for their stylist and fashion photography divisions. Unforunately, none of these experiences lead to any paid jobs. Since graduating school, he has gone through 8 retail jobs, worked as a wedding photographer, and a photo editor for a portrait company.
The Winter 2084 collection is a really loaded collection with multiple sources of overlapping inspiration. It's Mark's first fashion collection, and it will continue to grow until the year 2084 (assuming he is still alive), so technically it's his first and last collection (but not his only collection). The pieces are hand assembled from recycled materials, making them truly individualized. The clothing is meant for a post apocalyptic world, where it's kill or be killed. The idea was to create hand sewn geometric armor with a raw aesthetic. The collection started as Mark began to piece life back together out of his emotional wreckage, and Winter 2084 is just that. Piecing life, clothing, back together to move forward in a new and uncertain world reminiscent to the George Orwell's book, "1984". Gaining much inspiration from Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, using red and green color combinations and diagonal "slashes" to reference this idea. Scientifically proven, red and green combined makes people feel very uneasy which is exactly what the Winter2084 collection was about, uneasiness.
The collection debuted at Maxwells in Hoboken NJ, and the Glasslands Gallery during Williamsburg's Fashion Weekend in 2011 where he collaborated with the noise group Yellow Tears for an unsettling fashion presentation where his models used high fashion postapocalyptic weapons to slaughter him on stage, a play on the kill or be killed aspect of Winter2084, while also poking fun at the fashion industry.
The Winter2084 campaign shot by Mark has a very cinematic approach. Inspired by films such as The Warriors, Mad Max, and the covers to Grace Jones albums, Tauriello created disjointed images to finalize his vision.
2011-Present
Just a few stitches away from his new collection, Tauriello plans on showing again at WIlliamsburg Fashion Weekend while finding new and innovative ways of documenting his work. The collection is said to debut February 2012. Not much is being revealed about what his collection will be like, but Mark has announced that he has designed all of the fabrics himself.