If you summon your creature can you try opening the chest when it is between you and the statue?
Have you installed the
patch? The amount of damage may be a bug (assuming you are not just vulnerable to magical damage with low hit points), or at least there was a fix for a similar issue, where some people ran into certain boss type opponents with over-powered attacks.
Have you defeated all the opponents in that passage? In D2:ED I don't recall having to do anything special to get to that chest (I don't think I was particularly impressed by the contents, either, though that may have changed in FoV/DKS).
Welcome to the forum.