A performance artist was hauled off by the law Wednesday when he tried to open an exhibit in Midtown called "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama."

Yazmany Arboleda insisted his show was about the "character assassination" of the candidates and insisted he was no danger to either Democrat.

"It's my right as an artist to have that sign up," the 27-year-old artist said. "There's no blood, there's no guns, there's no reference to violence. My work is about words and how the media has torn them apart."

He was not charged with a crime and released at 11:30 a.m. by police after two hours of questioning.

Arboleda, who was born in Boston and raised in Colombia, said he has hired a lawyer and is determined to open his exhibit on Thursday.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, however, called the words "totally inappropriate" and added, "This is all under investigation."

With Clinton in town and Obama en route to the city a day after he clinched the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Arboleda was putting the finishing touches on his provocative exhibition when cops and Secret Service agents swooped down on the storefront at 9:30 a.m.

While Arboleda was taken to a nearby precinct for questioning "about his motivation," cops taped brown paper of the the inflammatory title he had neatly stenciled on the windows of the West 40th St. storefront, Kelly said.

BY ALISON GENDAR, STEPHANIE GASKELL AND CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS