'PANDORA'S BOX' AN ANODIZED ALUMINUM WIRE AND ANODIZED COPPER CHAIR, 1991

In the early 1980s Forrest Myers became interested in the work of the American architect, author and inventor Buckminster Fuller. Experimenting with Fuller's principles of tensional integrity and repeated tetrahedrons, Myers developed a series of furniture pieces using a dense tangle of aluminum wire pressed into a box. 'Pandora's Box,' a delightfully successful combination of sculpture and design, is a particularly important work in this series. Here mankind's evils, an unfurling tangle of wire, seem to be emerging from within a mysterious copper box which is bursting open at its seams. Or, perhaps Pandora herself, with her arms outstretched to form the arms of the chair, is growing out of this tangled mess of troubles. With this clever and witty piece, Myers explores the polarities of confinement and chaos, solidity and light and the rigidity of geometry versus the organisms of nature.

A widely accomplished sculptor and California native, Myers currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at, among other venues, the Paula Cooper Gallery, the Ehrlich Gallery, Furniture of the Twentieth Century and Art et Industrie. He is also renowned for his public art work 'Gateway to SoHo,' located on the side of 599 Broadway at Houston Street in New York City. Once in jeopardy of destruction, the assemblage of 42 protruding green-blue aluminum beams on a teal background has recently been restored.