From extraordinary objects to explorations of the American West, this week we’re checking out gallery exhibitions taking place in London, UK, and Lugano, Switzerland.

In The World of Extraordinary Objects, London’s October Gallery brings together artists from around the world to play with the capacity of art to mesmerize. These three dimensional works are made from a variety of media—from recycled paper and books to high-tech communication cables—and present commentaries on our involvement in society today, on both a personal level and as a whole. Artists Gyeong Yoon An, Jukhee Kwon, and Remy Jungerman, who are all showing at October Gallery for the first time, present their innovative creations among a retinue of established October Gallery artists Romuald Hazoumè, Laila Shawa, and Gérard Quenum.

In Red Presence, Korean artist Jukhee Kwon gives an energetic new life and rebirth to her medium of choice; she turns book pages and magazines into sculptures that echo the shape of trees, their original material. In these works, the artist references memory and her own developing life experience.

The World of Extraordinary Objects will be on display from February 21 to April 13 at 24 Old Gloucester Street,London,UK.

Jukhee Kwon, Red Presence (detail), 2013, October Gallery, London, UK

At De Primi Fine Art SA in Lugano, Switzerland, we travel back in time for an exploration of Edward Sheriff Curtis’s work in The Dance of Memory. In the late 1800s, this photographer of the American West captured the plight of the North American Indians in his beautifully rendered prints. Through his work, Curtis called attention to the western white man’s “unquenchable thirst for power,” and its effect on those that came in its path. Curtis captured the daily lives of the Western terrain inhabitants in dramatic detail, providing us with stunning insight into the origins of the now highly developed medium of photography, and its ability to document the unknown.

The Dance of Memory will be on display from February 21 to April 6 at Piazza Cioccaro 2, Lugano, Switzerland.

Edward Sheriff Curtis, The vanishing race Navaho, 1904, De Primi Fine Art SA, Lugano, Switzerland