It starts with a static shot of an unfinished wall, the drywall carefully joined, the seams and nails spackled over. Then: a high-heeled foot bursting through, the beginning of an all-out assault on the wall, whose Barbie pink reverse side can now be seen. Kate Gilmore is fighting tooth and nail to get out of her pink box. Her wardrobe, too, indicates a kind of confinement — a dark utilitarian dress, pantyhose, and the nine-to-fiver heels; her hair, which rarely appears in the close-cropped, simply shot, four-plus-minute video, is adorned with a girlish barrette.

Walk This Way (see left) is the newest video in Gilmore’s current show at Smith-Stewart gallery and was created on-site; visitors pass through the portals she smashed in two makeshift walls to enter the exhibition. The floor is covered with rubble and dust.

A trained sculptor who began making videos in 2003, Gilmore has moved toward site-specific works recently, says gallerist Amy Smith-Stewart. Another of the four videos in the show (all 2008; all available in editions of 5), Between a Hard Place, was created in Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art last September; in it, the New York–based artist breaks through five consecutive walls with what appears to be a particular vengeance. She stomps, tears, punches, pulls, elbows, high-kicks, and karate-chops wall after wall, and she does it all clad in a tasteful black wrap dress, black pantyhose, and yellow heels, recalling Ginger Rogerss proto-feminist assertion that she did everything her celebrated partner Fred Astaire did, only backward and in heels.

If Gilmore’s actions suggest endurance art or an Amazon, wild-woman approach — in Down the House she goes at a pile of building materials with a sledgehammer for 17 minutes straight — the videos themselves are refined. For Between a Hard Place, she painted the fronts and backs of the walls pale gray and warm yellow, respectively, and the finished arrangement of portal after portal has a rather painterly effect. Her wardrobes, too, are carefully selected (it took her “forever” to find those yellow heels, Smith-Stewart said).

The last video in the show, Higher Horse, departs from Gilmore’s usual method in that it features other figures, and she is largely inactive. Previously, Gilmore always created her works alone, with no spectators, all in a single take. In Higher Horse, created in Rome, she appears atop a pyramid of white plaster blocks wearing a black skirt, pink top, and high heels. Two men dressed in manual-labor-appropriate dark jeans and white undershirts begin to strike the blocks deftly with sledgehammers, and almost immediately, the pyramid crumbles and the artist tumbles down with it, losing a shoe. She climbs back to the top of the rubble, where she mostly stands idle as her footing literally gives out from under her; it’s as if the trappings of modern femininity — the skirt, the heels — prevent her from either helping the men with their task, or, as they come closer with their sledgehammers, defending herself.

Here are Kate Gilmore’s picks for shows to see in New York this weekend:

1. Alex Bag at the Whitney Museum of American Art, (no closing date announced)

“Always intriguing, with great humor and social critique, Alex Bag is an artist that many younger artists have been influenced by and one who deserves a larger platform. The Whitney has commissioned a new piece based on a 1970s television show.”

2. Nayland Blake at Location One, through February 14

“A career survey of Nayland Blake’s work, this show should not be missed. An artist who has been dealing with sexual and racial identity for 25 years — his work is strange, perverse, and hilarious.”

3. Performance 1: Tehching Hsieh,” at the Museum of Modern Art, January 21 through May 18

“Tehching Hsieh is the artist famous for his year-long performances — chaining himself to another person, living in a cage, punching a clock every hour, and more. The first exhibition of MoMA’s new performance series, this exhibition will focus on the photographs taken during the time he lived in a cage for a year.

Also, there are these two pieces in group shows that I’d recommend:

Nan Goldins The Battle of Sexual Dependency in ‘Here is Every. Four Decades of Contemporary Art,’ through March 23
Nan Goldin puts her life into a soundtrack. I have seen this piece in different incarnations before, and it always moves me and makes me stay through the whole thing (even the credits!) and want more. Her mix of honesty, sadness, joy, desperation, and excitement make this piece irresistible.

Fischli and Weisss The Way Things Go in ‘Artists Choice: Vik Muniz, Rebus,’ through February 23
Perhaps one of the best video/sculptures ever made. A Rube Goldberg extravaganza. I was so inspired by seeing it again after several years that I bought a copy on Amazon for 20 bucks!”

4. Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool at the Studio Museum in Harlem, through March 15

“In this show, it is very easy to see how younger artists have been inspired by Barkley Hendricks. His characters from the ’70s — and his self-portraits — really do show ‘the birth of the cool.’ A must-see.”

5. Robert Melee at City Hall Park, courtesy the Public Art Fund, through April

“Robert Melee has made four large-scale ‘figurative’ sculptures at City Hall Park. Melee, the master of depravity, has made public-friendly sculptures for the park. The drippy paint and figure-based works are absolutely gorgeous while still maintain an intriguing and mysterious darkness.”