身為當代最受矚目與肯定的中國藝術家之一，徐冰（1955-）最為人熟知的便是他在語言文字上的創造和表現，以及對中國文化和人類文明的反思，過往對徐冰的討論遂多著眼於此，但「自然」在其作品中的重要意義亦不容忽視。事實上，徐冰作品中符號轉譯的特色，多半涉及對自然與文明的辯證，這一點由他對動物元素的廣泛使用，以及近年來將環境關懷與藝術創作結合的實踐就可看出。因此，本文分別從兩個部分進行探討，先就徐冰以動物為題材的作品如《一個轉換案例的研究》和《文化動物》做為觀察的切入點，再析論《背後的故事》與近期如《木．林．森》計畫中所展現對生態環境的關懷，進而思考藝術如何成為都市文明發展過程中，回應自然、反思文明的重要媒介。

Xu Bing’s works have been known for their inventive coinage of language as well as their speculation on Chinese culture and human civilization. And yet, over the course of his artistic career, “nature” is an important aspect not to be neglected. Take the representative series, Background Stories, as an example. In this series, Xu Bing uses recycled materials at hand— fishnets, hemp-fibers, deadwoods, bricks, and other “wastes and disposables”, assembling them before putting them in projected lighting. Seen from the front, the series presents an array of unique images characteristic of ink wash paintings. Xu Bing resorts to a marked contrast between “front” and “back” to foreground differences of nature/civilization and tradition/modern, an approach which might seem still yoked to a binary opposition of value system. However, the ways he employs elements of nature and the concepts he intends to convey in his works offer much room for investigating and analyzing how humans respond to and deal with nature in recent development of urban civilization. Front and back, tradition and modern, nature and civilization, the divine and the human, dissembling and assembling, dismantling and reconstructing—these binary concepts are reversed sometimes, permeated at other times, and contradicted at still other times to open up the possibility for multiple dialogues. This paper focuses on elements of nature (including the flora and fauna) in Xu Bing’s works. It begins with observing works which feature the animals, such as A Case Study of Transference and Cultural Animals, and moves on to analyze the green concerns expressed in works like Background Stories and The Forest Project (Mu‧Lin‧Sen). In so doing, this paper deepens inquiries into the significance of natural elements in Xu Bing’s works and reflects on how they present interactive models between man and nature.