Leo Steinberg’s idea of the flatbed picture plane is well-known, but recently there have been so many exhibitions inviting viewers to lie down (in London, projects by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, and Olafur Eliasson have all evidenced the trend) that a new twist in the concept may be necessary: the flatbed audience.

Like her installation at San Stae in Venice as part of the 2005 Biennale, Pipilotti Rist’s new work is a ceiling projection, and was best viewed from the daybeds installed in the space (shoes off, please!) rather than by standing and straining one’s neck. But whereas

Outside is polyglot East London, but once inside Andrew Mania’s show “Gogolin” we are in Poland—albeit a Poland of the mind that compounds past and present, authentic and imaginary. The artist’s name, stenciled next to the entrance, reads as “Andrzej Mania”; the wall beside the reception desk bears a pointedly untranslated lyric from a Polish polka that, I later discover, concerns a woman’s departure from her partner. She’s going to Gogolin, in the country’s Krapkowice region, but she can’t tell him why. Sometimes, as when life feels stale, predictable, lacking romance, you just have to go.