Celebrating the Downfall of the Berlin Wall : Art: Ten graffiti-covered slabs of the Berlin Wall will go on free public exhibition Friday at the Tennessee Avenue Art Space.

‘I don’t know if it is good painting or not. I just like it,” Tobias Hausberg says while surveying graffiti-covered slabs of cement being laboriously moved into a Westside warehouse. The only thing that separates his remark from the I-don’t-know-anything-about-art-but-I-know -what-I-like cliche is that the object of his affection is the Berlin Wall.

Ten colorfully painted sections of the wall--eight measuring about 4x5 feet and two 4x13 feet--will be on view at the Tennessee Avenue Art Space, at 11560 Tennessee Ave., from Friday through July 4. The free public exhibition will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

The infamous wall may have been the most detested symbol of the Cold War, but it also became the world’s largest mural. Artists, tourists, political activists and ordinary citizens all painted on the West German face of the wall, which actually stood on East German soil. Over the years, these compulsive artists piled image on image, slogan on slogan, so that the painted spectacle was constantly changing. Occasionally a particularly brave soul would risk life and limb by scaling the wall and getting in a few licks on the East German side of the concrete impediment.

The show offers a sampling of community artistry under stressful conditions. One artist painted a long arm and hand, apparently reaching out for freedom. Another brushed a figure that might be a motorcyclist speeding away from danger. Still others painted for the love of painting or to put their stamp on a hated barrier. “I see it as an effort to humanize something that was basically inhuman,” said Donna Stein, curator of Raleigh Enterprises, owner of Raleigh Studios and co-sponsor of the show with Executive Life Insurance.

Hausberg, a 33-year-old West Berliner, removed the eight, relatively small chunks of the wall in a burst of energy and a rush of bravado. Seizing the moment when the floodgates of the divided city were finally opened, he tried unsuccessfully to get permission to cut out painted parts of the wall but he got a typically bureaucratic response: “Come back next week.” Frustrated by delays and persuaded that the wall would be picked to bits by tourists, he plunged into the project without authorization.

Working clandestinely with a small band of friends and a phony security guard, he removed chunks of the wall and took them home. “We made a lot of noise with our hammers, but the guards couldn’t always tell where the sound was coming from. Sometimes we threw them off the track by setting off fireworks a mile from where we were working. Other times we had to run and leave our tools behind,” he said.

When the political heat had cooled, Hausberg returned to the East German authorities, confessed his “crime,” paid for the pieces he had taken and got possession of two much larger segments that the East Germans had removed. “They could see that really I’m an honest man, so they gave me first choice of the pieces they had,” he said. The deal wasn’t cheap, however. Hausberg got what he wanted by making a large contribution to an East German medical center.

“I have a confidential contract with the East Germans, so I can’t tell you the details. I can tell you I paid a lot of money,” Hausberg said. Apparently so did Japanese collectors who eagerly purchased pieces of the wall and shipped their treasures to Japan.

Hausberg first visited Los Angeles in 1982, when he studied to be a stuntman and taught fencing to actors. Back home in West Berlin, he held more ordinary jobs, most recently selling Volkswagens and Mercedes-Benzes. But when the wall was about to come tumbling down, “there was something in my blood. I had to do something new, something crazy,” Hausberg said.

Once he was the legal owner of the wall fragments, Hausberg had to figure out what to do with them. First he displayed two pieces at the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, a central cross-over point in the divided city. “Americans like to go to Checkpoint Charlie and they seemed very interested in the wall. I knew that all Americans couldn’t come to Berlin, so I decided to bring the Berlin Wall to the United States,” he said. Hausberg shipped the relatively small pieces to New York last spring and searched for a place to display them. The first show took place last March in Soho. The exhibition only lasted 10 days and attracted little attention, but George Rosenthal, president of Raleigh Enterprises in Los Angeles, happened to see it.

Discovering that Hausberg also had two large segments of the wall, Rosenthal arranged to bring the entire group to Los Angeles. The Tennessee Avenue warehouse was whipped into shape as a temporary gallery. The eight smaller pieces were sent from New York and the two massive panels, weighing more than 6,000 pounds apiece, were flown in from West Berlin.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Stein was overseeing the project while a crew from Contemporary Installations Inc. moved the concrete panels into place with forklifts. The wall fragments will be the central attraction of the exhibition, but 18 color photographs of the graffiti-covered wall by Leland Rice will provide a larger context.

His photographs include cartoon images of Dick Tracy and Charlie Chaplin, cropped compositions that read like abstract paintings and chilling references to surveillance.

In addition, Hausberg has provided a small display of memorabilia, including medals, posters and photographs. A 57-minute videotape on the history of the wall will run continuously during visiting hours.

And what will become of the wall fragments after the show closes? Will Hausberg take them back to Germany? “No,” he shrieks in mock horror. “I will be beaten if I take the Berlin Wall back to Berlin.” Instead, he hopes to give the two large panels to museums and find buyers for the smaller pieces.