Buddhism, Symbolism, and Notions

In reading about Zen I see encouragement to question "notions". Understand them as to some extent misrepresenting the things they represent. The map is not the territory. I'm not sure how to interpret that and I can think of a couple different meanings. Consider a statue like The Statue of Liberty. To some it represents a country with a history of slavery and Jim Crow laws and the statue is a lie. To others, it represents a land of opportunity, an escape from tyranny. To someone else, a statue is just a bunch of copper, the copper itself being made of atoms, the atoms made up of quarks. The statue has no "romantic" or "pessimistic" meaning. Does Buddhism make a distinction between the emotional notions like "freedom" and "tyranny" versus more material notions like "copper" and "atoms"? I could see the distinction mattering in terms of suffering. If you see a statue and it reminds you of unpleasant things, you suffer. If you just look at the statue and just see a bunch of copper, it won't make you suffer. If "All Emotions are pain", then even positive associations with the statue are a painful thing. Neutral associations like "The Statue is made of copper" seems to be of a different substance, a concept more directly "pointing at" what it refers to whereas the emotionally loaded notions in a since "point away". Are both kinds of notions the kinds of notions to be wary of? Even still, are there distinctions made between the two?