YONKERS— HOW far removed are we from nature? Can art, like the photography of Karl Grimes, which captures with uncomfortable closeness, the dioramic habitats of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, shape our understanding of how wild animals live and behave?

Why and how visual artists manipulate our view of the animal kingdom is the subject of the exhibition at the Hudson River Museum of Art here, titled ''Animal Artifice.''

The deception or misinformation found in the photographic work of Daniel Torop also challenges our notions regarding animals. In ''Chickens and Swans'' (1999), he adds a pair of chicken photo-cutouts just this side of the ocean's surf, putting them in a nearly impossible circumstance. Using what looks to be a summer vacation sunset-type photo-format, Mr. Torop forces us to rethink the whole chicken experience, which in reality has little to do with romantic settings or freedom.

Catherine Chalmers's two large-format color Polaroids titled ''Impostors'' (1998) pose some very interesting questions about the creatures we love and those we despise. By putting home-bred cockroaches in her refrigerator, Ms. Chalmers is able to slow their movements long enough to paint lady bug patterns on their heads and backs. She then stations a handful of these transformed pests atop moistened, bright red daisies. The effect of the resulting images, though obvious, confronts our preconceptions with wit and whimsy.

The globe-combing eco-artist Alexis Rockman offers his version of a common home-bound environment in ''Saltwater Aquarium'' (1996). Here, Mr. Rockman combines some readily available objects like a photo-backdrop, gravel, a filtering system's hose, an aquarium net and a section of plastic coral to create the exhibition's most curious visual effect. A tank dwelling, hand-painted ominous-looking fish, which is about to be corralled by a paltry fish net, completes the assault on our psyche by conjuring up a pet-turned-monster type nightmare.

Gregory Crewdson goes a step further by fabricating studio-based habitats, which, despite their overwhelming falseness, rival most museum dioramas. In the C-print ''Untitled'' (1994), Mr. Crewdson employs a number of stuffed birds, a preserved moth, plastic flora, an idyllic, suburban-home-photo backdrop, soil, debris like coffee and beer cans covered with a mucky film and a pool of synthetic sludge. The main subject, a sea gull, perhaps dazed and confused by eating ocean pollutants, travels inland to forage for sustenance in this toxic waste pond, which is a stone's throw from what has come to symbolize suburban bliss, a bucolic ranch home.

Julie Heffernan's ''Self-Portrait as Top Model'' (1992-94) addresses the objectification of women by using the prized racehorse as a metaphor. Aside from the overpainted images of plastic surgery and body-image obsessions, there are a few more insidious elements. By superimposing the letters F and A over a foreground bush, Ms. Heffernan appears to make reference to the word fat or fashion, which in turn points to the fact that many women never feel comfortable with their appearance regardless of how thin or attractive they are. She also adds a ghostly, painted afterimage of an animal's leg, as it is being methodically carved for consumption. The repetition of this diagram somehow brings to mind brainwashing techniques, which underlines her overall point.

Rachel Lowther's two sculptures titled ''Osprey'' (1999) stand guard atop drastically pointed perches. The fact that these two sculptures and the surrounding walls of the exhibition space are almost the same brown hue makes one think of the animal as architectural ornament, a la Antonio Gaudi.

Laura Stein's cast-acrylic sculptures illustrate a concern for the natural order of things. Transgenic foods and animal cloning alter nature in ways that alarm, especially the potential for unpredictable mutations. Her works show those fears with an elegance usually reserved for the more beautiful things in life, which adds a much needed tension to her art.

Fred Tomaselli does his own view of the genetically altered in two alluring collages. Mr. Tomaselli cuts away the bodies of a page of bird illustrations and replaces their natural coverings with the colorful images from an outerwear catalog. The effect of this mix-and-match combination is puzzling. Are the animals opting to replace their original coat of feathers with a fashion statement, or is the addition of human garb more like some future generation's attempt to resolve an experiment gone awry?

Tom Uttech spends long periods in the woods of northern Minnesota and Canada, where he garners the ideas, images and inspiration for his imagined landscapes. In ''Osaminadon Mokawiodjima'' (1994), we see an entire forest worth of animals as they hurriedly flee their natural habitats.

It is hard to figure out exactly, what is occurring here. Perhaps there is a roaring fire to the east, or maybe a group of hunters flushed them out. One animal, an owl, faces us as all others look due west. It is as if the owl spies us, reasoning we should do something.

No collection of animal-based illusions is complete without the work of William Wegman. Mr. Wegman has built a long career on making his pet Weimaraners pose in odd or humanistic ways. The two photos in the show illustrate the subtleties of the artist's body of work, which can be seen as a cross between Surrealism and Conceptualism.

''Animal Artifice'' at the Hudson River Museum ends Jan. 9. The number to call for information is 963-4550.

Photos: ''Saltwater Aquarium,'' above, by Alexis Rockman; ''Stuffed Histories,'' top left, by Karl Grimes; ''Impostors,'' at left, by Catherine Chalmers, and ''Family Emberizidae'' by Fred Tomaselli, all at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers.