Is it possible to call a native DLL from Adobe AIR?

Apparently it is possible to call a native executable from AIR using NativeProcessInfo. But can an AIR app call a DLL directly?

One possibility is to wrap the DLL is some kind of proxy EXE, but I'd like to avoid that, if possible.

By "call a DLL" you must be meaning retrieve pointer to some DLL function and invoke it. But how native code should execute in AIR application? AIR can run executables in separate processes, but what should it do with native code from DLL? You definitely need proxy exe to do that, at least to provide environment for function calls.